THE INTERNAL ECONOMY OF THE ARMY
Given such a conscript army as can be seen in working in any
Continental nation, there is a very good reason for keeping the rate
of pay for the rank and file down to as low a standard as possible,
for the State concerned in the upkeep of a conscript army puts all,
or in any case the greater part, of its male citizens through the
mill of military service, and not only puts them through, but compels
them to go through. It thus stands to reason that, as the men serve
by compulsion, there is no need to offer good rates of pay as an
inducement to serve; further, it is to the interest of the State
concerned to keep down the expense attendant on the maintenance of its
army as much as possible, and for these two reasons, if for no other,
the rate of pay in Continental armies is remarkably small.
With a volunteer army, however, the matter must be looked at in a
different light. It is in the interest of the State, of course,
that expenses in connection with its army should be kept as low as
possible, but there the analogy between conscript and volunteer rates
of pay ends. If the right class of man is to be induced to volunteer
for service, he must be offered a sufficient rate of pay to make
military service worth his while--in time of peace, at any rate. The
ideal rate of pay would be attained if the State would consider itself,
so far as its army is in question, in competition with all other
employers of labour, and would offer a rate of pay commensurate with
the services demanded of its employees. By that method the right class
of man would be persuaded to come forward in sufficient numbers, and
the Army could be maintained at strength without trouble.
The British Army is the only voluntary one among the armies of the
Western world, and for some time past it has experienced difficulty
in obtaining a sufficiency of recruits to keep it up to strength, as
was evidenced by the series of recruiting advertisements in nearly
all daily papers of the kingdom with which the year 1914 opened.
Statistics go to prove that recruiting is not altogether a matter of
arousing patriotism, but is dependent on the state of the labour market
to a very great extent. In the years following on the South African
war, there was a larger percentage of unemployed in the kingdom than
at normal times, and consequently recruiting flourished; men of the
stamp that the Army wants, finding nothing better to do, and often
being uncertain where the next meal was to come from, enlisted, and
the Army had no trouble in maintaining itself at strength, although
the rate of pay that it offered was lower than that earned, in many
cases, by the ordinary unskilled labourer. Gradually, however,
commercial conditions began to improve, and for the past year or two,
in consequence of a very small percentage of unemployment among the
labouring classes, recruiting has suffered--the Army does not offer as
much as the ordinary civilian employer, either in wages or conditions
of life, and consequently men will not enlist as long as they can get
something to do in a regular way. Hence the War Office advertisements,
which had very little effect on the recruiting statistics, and were
wrongly conceived so far as appealing to the right class of man was in
question. It was not till Lord Kitchener had assumed control of the War
Office that the advertisements emanating from that establishment made
a real personal appeal to the recruit; the two events may have been
coincidence, for the war has pushed up recruiting as a war always does;
again, there may have been something in the fact that Kitchener, as
well as being an ideal organiser of men, is a great psychologist.
However this may be, the fact remains that, although the War Office
by the mere fact of its advertising has entered the labour market
as a competitor with civilian employers, it has not yet offered any
inducement equal to that offered by civilian employers. The rate of
pay for the rank and file is still under two shillings a day, with
lodging and partial board, for in time of peace the rations issued to
the soldier do not form a complete allowance of food, and even the
messing allowance is in many cases insufficient to provide sufficient
meals--the soldier has to supplement both rations and messing out of
his pay. When all allowances and needs have been accounted for, the
amount of pay that a private soldier can fairly call his own, to spend
as he likes, is about a shilling a day--and civilian employment, as a
rule, offers more than that. Moreover, modern methods of warfare call
for a more intelligent and better educated man than was the case fifty
years ago; the soldier of to-day, as has already been remarked, has
not only to be able to obey, but also to exercise initiative; a better
class of man is required, and though the factor of numbers is still
the greatest factor in any action that may be fought between opposing
armies, the factor of intelligence and elementary scientific knowledge
is one that grows in importance year by year. The mass of recruits, in
time of peace, is drawn from among the unemployed unskilled labourers
of the country; though, by the rate of pay given, the country effects
a certain saving, this is more than balanced by the difficulty of
educating and training these men--to say nothing of the expense of it.
A higher rate of pay would attract a better class of man and provide
a more intelligent army, one of greater value to the State. And, even
assuming that the class of man obtained at present is as good as need
be, still the rate of pay is insufficient; the work men are called
on to perform, the responsibilities that are entailed on them in the
course of their work, deserve a higher rate of pay than these men
obtain at present.
An illustration of this will serve far better than mere statement
of the fact. It is well known that for years past there has been
some difficulty in obtaining a sufficiency of officers for cavalry
regiments, but what is not so well known is that, when a troop of
cavalry is short of a lieutenant to lead it at drill and assume
responsibility for its working, the troop-sergeant takes command and
control of the troop. At the best, the pay of the troop-sergeant
cannot be reckoned at more than four shillings a day, and on that
amount of salary--twenty-eight shillings a week--he is given charge
and control of somewhere about thirty men, together with horses,
saddlery, and other Government property to the value of not less than
£1800. For the safety and good order of this amount of property he
is almost entirely responsible, as well as being charged with the
superintendence, instruction, and control of the thirty men or more who
comprise the troop under his command.
The fact is that the world has moved forward tremendously during the
past thirty or forty years, while, except for small and inadequate
changes in the rates of pay, the Army has stood still. Labour
conditions have altered in every way, and the cost of living has
increased, forcing up the wage rate. The Army has taken note of none
of these things, but has gone on, as regards pay and allowances, in
the way of forty years ago. The necessity for an advertising campaign
proved that the old ways were beginning to fail, and efforts were being
made to overcome the shortage of men without increasing the rates of
pay--vain efforts, if statistics of the amount of recruiting done
before and after the beginning of the advertising campaign count for
anything.
We may leave these larger considerations to come down to a view of
the interior working of a unit, its pay, feeding, and general life.
All arrangements as regards pay for infantrymen are managed by the
colour-sergeants of the companies, while in the cavalry and artillery
the squadron or battery quartermaster-sergeants have control of
the pay-sheets. These non-commissioned officers are charged with
the business of drawing weekly the amount of pay required by their
respective companies, squadrons, or batteries, and paying out the same
to the men under the supervision of the company, squadron, or battery
officers. The presence of the officer at the pay-table is a nominal
business in most cases, and the non-commissioned officer does all the
work, while in every case he is held responsible for any errors that
may occur. Each man is given a stated weekly rate of pay, and at the
end of each month there is a general settling up, at which the accounts
of each man are explained to him; he is told what debts he has incurred
to the regimental tailor, the bootmaker, or for new clothing that he
has been compelled to purchase to make good deficiencies; in every unit
each man is charged two or three pence a month--and sometimes more--by
way of barrack damages, which includes the repair of broken windows,
etc., and altogether the compulsory stoppages from pay generally
amount to not less than two shillings per man per month.
The system of pay is a complicated one. As a bed-rock minimum there
is a regular rate of pay of a shilling and a penny a day for an
infantryman, and a penny or twopence a day more for the other arms of
the service. On to this is added the messing allowance of threepence a
day, which is spent for the men in supplementing their ration allowance
of food, and never reaches them in coin at all; there is a clothing
allowance, which goes to defray the expense attendant on the renewal
of articles of attire; there is yet another allowance for the upkeep
of clothing and kit; there is the proficiency pay to which each man
becomes entitled after a certain amount of service, and which consists
of varying grades according to the musketry standard and character
of the man; this ranges from fourpence to sixpence a day; and then
there is badge pay, which adds a penny or twopence a day to old
soldiers’ pay so long as they behave themselves. The colour-sergeant
or quartermaster-sergeant has to keep account of all these small
items, and it is small matter for wonder that many a worried officer
or non-com., puzzling his brains over the intricacies of a pay-sheet,
expresses an earnest wish that the whole complicated system may be
swept away, and a straightforward rate of pay for each man substituted.
The Army Pay Corps, a non-combatant branch of the service, is charged
with the business of auditing and keeping accounts straight, and this
corps forms the final court of appeal for all matters connected with
the pay of the soldier. The Royal Warrant for Pay, a bulky volume
published annually, is the manual by which the Pay Corps is guided
to its decisions, and from which the harassed colour-sergeant or
quartermaster-sergeant derives inspiration for his work.
In all units serving at home, and in most of those serving abroad,
a system of messing is established regimentally to supplement the
ration allowance. Rations for the soldier, by the way, consist in
England of one pound of bread and three-quarters of a pound of meat
with bone per day, and all else must be bought out of pay and messing
allowance. In colonial stations the ration allowance is enlarged to
include certain vegetables, and in India the scale is still more
liberal, but it is obvious that the English ration of bread and meat
is not sufficient for the needs of the soldier, nor will the official
messing allowance of threepence per day per man altogether compensate
for ration deficiencies. Beyond doubt, however, the provision of
necessaries has been brought to a very fine art in the Army, and, with
an efficient cook-sergeant in charge of the regimental cookhouses, and
capable caterers to supervise purchases for the messing account, with
an allowance of fourpence a day per man the rank and file can have a
sufficiency of plain, wholesome food.
The sergeant-cook in charge of the cookhouses of each unit must have
passed through a course at the Aldershot school of cookery before
he can undertake the duties of his post, but he is the only trained
cook in each unit. Men are chosen as company cooks or squadron cooks
haphazard, and often with too little regard to their fitness for their
posts. In spite of all disadvantages, though, the average of cooking
in the Army is good, especially when one considers the unpromising
material with which the cooks have to deal. The contract price for Army
meat is not half that paid per pound by the civilian buyers; it is, of
course, all foreign meat that is supplied in normal times.
While the single men of the Army draw their meat supplies daily,
married quarters’ rations are drawn on stated days, and, as the
majority of the occupants of the married quarters are non-commissioned
officers and their wives, it follows naturally that, in getting their
exact ration with regard to weight, they are given every consideration
with regard to the quality of meat cut off from the lump. On married
quarters’ days the troops get a surprisingly small allowance of
meat and a surprisingly large allowance of bone, for the regulation
governing supply enacts that “three-quarters of a pound of meat _with
bone_” shall be allowed for each soldier. That “with bone” may mean
that two-thirds of the allowance or more is bone, though the soldier
has in this matter as well as in others the right of complaint if he
considers that he is being subjected to injustice in any way. The
quality of meat supplied, and its correct quantity, is supposed to
constitute one of the cares of the orderly officer of the day, for the
orderly officer, together with the quartermaster or the representative
of the latter, is supposed to attend at the issue of rations of both
bread and meat.
In this connection a word regarding the duties of the orderly
officer will not be out of place. These duties are undertaken by the
lieutenants and second lieutenants of each unit, who take turns of
a day apiece as “orderly officer of the day.” It has already been
remarked that an officer does not really begin to count in the life
of a unit until he has attained to the rank of captain and to the
experience gained by such length of service as makes him eligible for
captaincy. In no one thing does this fact become so clear as the way
in which the duty of orderly officer of the day is performed in the
majority of units. It happens as a rule that a lieutenant performs
his turn of orderly conscientiously and well; at times, however, it
happens that a subaltern, impatient at the fiddling duties involved
in the turn of orderly, regards complaints on the part of the men as
trivial and annoying, neglects to see that real causes of grievance are
properly remedied, and lays the foundations of deep dislike for himself
on the part of the men of the unit. One of the duties falling to the
orderly officer is that of visiting the dining-rooms of the regiment or
battalion and inquiring in each room if the men have any complaints to
make with regard to the quality or quantity of the food supplied. If
any complaint is made, it should be at once investigated, and, if found
justifiable, remedied.
But the subaltern doing orderly duty far too often does not
know--because he has not troubled to learn--the way to set about
remedying a just complaint; a very common form of reply to a complaint
by the men is, “I will see about it,” and that is all that the men
ever hear, while they are careful never to make a complaint to that
particular officer again, since they know he is not to be depended on.
The attitude of some junior officers towards the men making a complaint
is at times one of suspicion; the officer seems to imagine that the
man is doing it for amusement, and not until he has grown a little,
and incidentally passed out from the rank in which he takes his turn
as orderly officer, does he come to understand that men only make
complaints to their officers about things which are absolutely beyond
their own power to remedy. Frivolous or unjustifiable complaints, when
proved to be such, are very heavily punished, and consequently men
abstain as a rule from making them.
The orderly officer is not concerned alone with the food of the men;
he is supposed to visit the barrack-rooms and see that everything is
correct there; he has to visit the guard of his unit once by day and
once by night, and see that the guard is correct and the articles in
charge of the guard are complete according to the inventory on the
guard-board; he is supposed to visit all the regimental artificers’
establishments once during the day to see that work is being carried on
properly, and he is even concerned with the quality and issue of beer
in the canteen, while at the end of his day’s duty he has to fill in
and sign a report to the effect that he has performed all his duties
effectively--whether he has or no. His work, correctly carried through,
is no sinecure business.
Mention of the canteen takes us on to another point of military
economy, that of supplies of varying kinds apart from the actual ration
bread and meat. In each unit serving at home, a canteen is established
for the supply to the troops of articles of the best possible quality
at the lowest possible price “without limiting the right of the men
to purchase” in other markets, according to King’s Regulations on the
subject. In effect, however, the tenancy of a regimental canteen by a
contractor is a virtual monopoly, and, unfortunately for the troops
concerned, the monopoly is often made a rigid one. There is a “dry
bar,” or grocery establishment, at which men can purchase cleaning
materials for their kits and all articles of food that they require;
there is a “coffee bar,” where suppers are sold to the men and cooked
food generally is sold; and there is the “wet canteen,” whose sales are
limited to beer alone, and where the boozers of the unit congregate
nightly to drink and yarn. In old time the wet canteen used to be a
fruitful source of crime--as crime goes in the Army--and general
trouble, but moderation is the rule of to-day, and excessive drinking
is rare in comparison with the ways of twenty years or so ago. The wet
canteen of to-day is a cheerful place where men get their pints and
sit over them, forming “schools,” as the various groups of chums are
called, and drinking not so much as they talk, for they seek company
rather than alcohol.
For the teetotallers of each unit, the society known as the Royal Army
Temperance Association has established a “room” in practically every
unit of the service; at a cost of fourpence a month a man is given the
freedom of this room, and at the same time invited to sign the pledge,
which he generally does. In any case, if an A.T.A. man is caught
drinking to excess, he forfeits his membership of the Association and
the right to use its room. In the room itself a bar is set up at which
all kinds of temperance drinks are sold, together with buns and light
eatables. In the Army, a man refraining from the use of intoxicants
is said to be “on the tack,” and is known as a “tack-wallah.” Members
of the R.A.T.A. are designated “wad-wallahs,” or “bun-scramblers,” by
the frequenters of the canteen, who are known as “canteen-wallahs.”
The word “wallah” is a Hindustani one which has passed into currency
in the Army, its original meaning being the follower of any branch of
trade or employment. In the same way, numbers of Hindustani terms are
in general use; “roti” is almost invariably used in place of “bread,”
“char” for “tea,” and “pani” for “water,” all being correct Hindustani
equivalents. “Kampti,” meaning small, and “bus,” equivalent to “enough”
or “stop,” come from the same language, while “scoff” in place of “eat”
is derived from South Africa, where it is common currency even among
civilian white folks.
Married “on the strength” in the Army carries with it a number of
advantages for the married man. It is a little galling, in the
first place, to have to satisfy one’s commanding officer as to the
respectability of the intended wife before marriage, but it is not so
many years ago that there was good reason for this. Once married, the
soldier is granted free quarters for himself and wife, and the wife is
allowed fuel and light up to a certain amount, together with rations,
and an additional allowance is made in the event of children being
born. Curiously enough, however, the size of the quarters allotted to
the married men and their families is not determined by the number of
children in the family, but by the rank of the married man; not many
private soldiers venture to marry, for their rate of pay is so low as
to make the experiment an extremely risky one, although the wife of the
soldier gets--if she wishes it--a certain amount of the single men’s
washing to do, by way of supplementing her husband’s pay.
Married “off the strength”--that is, without the permission of the
officer commanding the unit--is doubly risky, for the wife of the man
who marries thus gets no official recognition; her husband has to
occupy a place in the barrack-room, for no separate quarters can be
allotted to him; he has at the same time to find lodgings somewhere
among the civilian inhabitants of the station for his wife--and
children, if there are any--and, if he is a good character, he may be
granted a sleeping-out pass, which confers on him the privilege of
sleeping out of barracks--and this is a privilege that he must beg, not
a right that he can claim. As the married establishment of a regiment
or battalion is necessarily small, men frequently get married “off
the strength,” though how they manage to exist and at the same time
provide for their wives on military pay is a mystery. The most common
explanation is that the wife, whatever work she has been engaged in
before her marriage, continues it after; the hardest part of the
business is that neither wife nor husband, in these circumstances, can
count on the possession of a home as those married “on the strength”
understand it.
The private soldier married “on the strength” usually has entered on
his second period of service--that is, he has finished the twelve years
for which he first contracted to serve, and has re-enlisted to complete
twenty-one years with a view to a pension. Generally he manages to get
a staff job of some sort, from employment on the regimental police to
barrack sweeper, or anything else that will get him out of attending
early morning parades as a rule--though all staff men have to attend
early parades when the orders of the day say “strong as possible.”
The rule in most units is that the staff jobs are distributed among
the older soldiers, for these are supposed, and with justice, to be
better able to dispense with perpetual training than the younger
men. As a rule, the appointment of any young soldier to a staff
appointment--except such posts as that of orderly-room clerk, for which
special aptitude counts before length of service--is the cause of
considerable bitterness among the older soldiers who are still at duty,
and is usually attributed to rank favouritism, whether it is due to
that or no.
In cavalry regiments especially, the ordinary duty-men look for
amusement when the staff men are “dug out” to undergo the ordinary
routine of duty, either by way of annual training or on the occasion
of a “strong as possible” parade. The duty-man has his horse every
day, and horse and man get to know each other, but the staff-man,
attending stables only on the occasion of his being warned to attend a
duty parade, has as a rule to take any horse that is “going spare,” as
they call it, and usually the horse that nobody else has taken up for
riding is not a pleasant beast. And the staff-man may be a bit rusty
as regards drill and riding, so that the two things combined produce
the effect of involuntary dismounting in the field or at riding school
occasionally--or, as the soldier would say, “dismounting by order from
hind-quarters.” Taken on the whole, the staff-man’s day at duty is
not a pleasant one, while, if he ventures to complain to his comrades
or grumble in any way, he gets more ridicule than sympathy. Usually
the duty-man affects to consider the staff-man an encumbrance, and in
the cavalry even signallers, during the time that they are excused
riding and attending stables, are told that it is “easy enough to wag a
little bit of stick about--why don’t you come down to stables and do a
bit?” The reply generally makes up in forcibility for a deficiency in
elegance, for the trooper is capable of maintaining his reputation as
regards the use of language--of sorts.
A form of staff employment which calls for a particular class of man
is the post of officer’s servant; it amounts to the regular work of a
valet for “first servant,” and that of a groom for “second servant,”
and is not always an enviable post, especially if the officer in
question is short-tempered or “bad to get on with.” Officers’ servants
occupy quarters away from the duty-men, and in the vicinity of the
officers’ mess in the case of single officers; married officers’
servants are provided with quarters in their masters’ houses. In
addition to the officers’ servants, there is in each unit a regular
staff of mess waiters both for officers’ and sergeants’ messes, while
all non-commissioned officers from the rank of sergeant upward are
permitted to employ a “bâtman” from among the men serving under them.
The sergeant’s bâtman, though, is not excused from duty as is the
officer’s servant, but has to get through all his own work, and then
clean the sergeant’s equipment, keep his bunk in order, groom his
horse, and clean his saddle (in cavalry and artillery units), as well
as attend all parades from which the sergeant has no power to excuse
him. Every staff job carries with it a certain amount of extra-duty
pay, and this, in addition to the fact of being excused from at least
some of the ordinary parades of the duty soldier, causes a post on
the staff to be sought after by most men. There are some, though,
who prefer to be at ordinary duty, and the man who is going in for
promotion usually avoids staff employ, for the two do not go together.
Among non-commissioned officers as well as among the rank and file
there is a certain amount of staff employment, but it is a smaller
amount, and a good deal of it is unenviable business. The post of
provost-sergeant, for instance, although it carries extra-duty pay, is
naturally not a popular business, for having control of the regimental
police and being responsible for the punishments of delinquents on
defaulters’ drill and punishment fatigues does not tend to increase the
popularity of a non-commissioned officer. The business of postman in
a regiment is usually entrusted to a corporal; as a rule, the oldest
corporal is chosen to fill this berth, and one just concluding his term
of military service is practically certain to get it as soon as it
falls vacant. But staff jobs for non-coms. are far fewer, relatively,
than for the rank and file, and, outside the artificers’ shops, the
regimental orderly room and quartermaster’s store, practically every
non-com. is at duty.