THE NEW ARMY
In the course of these pages the remark has already been made that the
British Army is in a state of flux; this is true mainly as regards
numbers and organisation, but with regard to discipline and training
no very great changes are possible. Methods of training may alter, and
do alter for the better from time to time, but the basic principles
remain, since an army can be trained only in one way: by the use of
strict discipline and of means calculated to impart to men the greatest
possible amount of instruction in the shortest space of time. The more
quickly a man absorbs the main points of his training, the better for
him and for the army whose effectiveness he is intended to increase.
In the new army of to-day, from which it is intended to draft effective
men into the firing line at the earliest possible moment, rapidity of
training is a prime essential. At the outset, owing to the enormous
numbers of men who flocked to the colours, training was no easy
matter, and for some time to come instructors will be scarce when
compared with the multitude of men who require training. In order
to combat this, instructors have been asked to re-enlist from among
ex-soldiers who, past fighting age themselves, are yet quite capable
of drilling the new men. A minor drawback arises here, however, in
that such of the instructors as left the colours before a certain date
are out of touch as regards modern weapons and drill. For instance,
the field gun at present in use in the British Army was not generally
adopted until after the conclusion of the South African campaign; in
the case of the cavalry, again, important modifications have been
brought about in drill and formations during the last ten years,
while the charger loading rifle with wind gauge is comparatively an
innovation both as regards cavalry and infantry. It is not intended
to imply that drill instructors who finished their colour service ten
or twelve years ago are of no use, for, in the matters of imparting
elementary drill and the first principles of discipline to the
recruits, they are invaluable and far too few. But, in more advanced
matters, it must be conceded that the sooner the new army can instruct
itself the better, for the proverb about an old dog and new tricks
may be applied to re-enlisted instructors and the new army, which is a
whole bag of new tricks.
It is essential that the new army should train itself at the earliest
possible moment, and for this reason there are endless opportunities
for the man with brains who enlists at the present time. The
re-enlisted drill instructor will not accompany the men of the new army
into the field, and, as an army increases, a relative increase must
be made in the number of its non-commissioned officers, while there
are also vacancies by the hundred for commissioned officers. For the
average man, however, it is useless at the present time to depend on
influence and back-door methods for promotion. Worth is all that will
count, and an ounce of enlistment to-day is worth a ton of influence
that might have been exercised yesterday. It is as true of the new
army as of any other profession that there is plenty of room at the
top. The way to get there is by enlistment to-day and hard and patient
application to one’s work for a matter of weeks or months.
No man can tell how long the new army will last, or what will be the
conditions of service and strength of the army after the proclamation
of peace. One thing, however, is certain. Not while a first-class
power remains on the continent of Europe will conscription cease
altogether between the Urals and the Atlantic, or between Archangel and
Brindisi. It is quite probable that when peace comes again, universal
conscription will cease, for there will no longer be an embodied threat
in central Europe--the Powers will have no more of that, and the
burden of armaments on the old scale must cease. On the other hand,
however, nations will maintain sufficient forces to enable them to
insist on international justice; the threat of the sword will always
form the final court of appeal from the decisions of any arbitration
body, and, while this is so, a British army must always be maintained.
The existence of primal human instinct is fatal to the idea of total
disarmament; war may not come again, for that is a contingency with
regard to which none can prophesy, but the fact remains that the best
provision for peace is ample preparation against the chances of war.
Thus the man who looks for a career out of the British Army need not
look in vain, for there will always be sufficient of an army, if only
for colonial and foreign service, to furnish capable men with all the
careers that they may desire. The other reason for enlistment, less
selfish and more vital, has been expressed by many voices and by
means of many pens; the country has called, and there are ugly names
for those who, without sufficient claims of kin to form cause for
exemption, refuse to answer the call.
With regard to the composition of the new army it may be said that
the standing of the men has altered materially since the outbreak
of hostilities, though this is in keeping with the trend of thought
and feeling that has been evident since the end of the South African
campaign. Up to the end of the nineteenth century there still remained
obscure provincial centres in which it was supposed that only wastrels
would enlist, with a view to getting an easy means of livelihood;
farther back, this conception of the Army was a very common one. It
is hard to say at what period of British history such an idea gained
currency, unless the employment of mercenaries previous to the time
of the French Revolution may have given it birth. For, long before
Waterloo, the British soldier gave ample proof of the stuff of which
he is made, and there is not a battlefield of history from which there
has not come some instance of self-denial or devotion to a comrade
which attests among the ranks of the British Army the existence of the
highest principles by which humanity is actuated.
But, up to the end of the nineteenth century, civilians could not
understand the Army. Kipling taught them a little, but Kipling’s
soldiers are all hard drinkers with a tendency to the slaughter of
aspirates, and various other linguistic eccentricities. As character
studies, Kipling’s soldiers are masterly works, but they bear little
relation to the soldier of to-day, who, even as an infantryman, is
required to be an educated man in certain directions, since he lives in
a welter of wind gauges and trajectory, decimal points and mathematical
calculations with regard to the accomplishment of his duties. The
public as a whole has been waking up to these facts slowly--very
slowly--but it has taken the world-catastrophe of a general European
war to shake the public entirely from its apathy, and cause it to
realise that the Army is an agglomeration of men in the highest sense
of that little three-lettered word. There is to-day among all ranks
and classes a realisation of the good that is, and always has been in
the Army; there is a new interest in soldiers, in military movements,
and in all that pertains to the theory and practice of war, and this
augurs well for the future of members of the new army, both on duty and
among their friends. Counting from the day that the nation wakened to
the good that is in the Army, and the possibility of soldiers being
at root like other men, military uniform has become a matter for pride
to its wearer, and respect from those who from any cause are unable
to assume the uniform. As this war has knit together motherland and
colonies, so, by means of this war, the soldier has come to his own.
The new army is not a thing apart from the nation: it is the nation.
The new army means an increase not in numbers alone, for we may accept
as a principle that the best will rule in a mass composed of all
sorts from best to worst--that is, if we grant relative equality in
the numbers of best and worst, and of each intervening grade. Periods
of commercial prosperity have left the Army dependent mainly on the
unemployed for its recruits, with a corresponding loss in education and
moral tone, but the new army is composed of men of all grades, actuated
for the most part by the highest possible impulses, and asking only
to be allowed to give of their best. Enlisting in this spirit, it is
inevitable that these men should look upward, and thus the best will
rule. For purposes of rule the Army needs the very best, for its own
sake and that of the future of the nation’s manhood. In gaining the
best and their influence, the Army will increase in social standing
and moral tone as well as in numbers.
No man comes out from the Army as he went in; there are many types, and
with the enormous increase in numbers at the present time, the number
of types will increase as well as the number of representatives of
each type. Country youths, town dwellers, agricultural labourers--who
often make the best and keenest soldiers--men who know nothing of
what labour is like, skilled artisans, and men from the office--all
come to the ranks of the Army, which, shaping them to compliance with
discipline, still leaves the stamp of individuality. The soldiers of
the new army will come back to their ordinary avocations bearing the
stamp of military training, stronger physically, and different in many
ways--mainly improved ways. But the metal on which the stamp of the
Army is impressed will remain the same, for one is first a man and then
a soldier. The instances of Prussian brutality evident to-day, and an
eternal disgrace to the German nation, do not prove anything against
the Prussian military system, but afford evidence that brutality is
ingrained in the Prussian before he goes up as a conscript to begin
his training. So, whatever the characteristics of a man may be, the
Army cannot make a brave soldier out of a cowardly civilian, and it
cannot make a good man into a bad one; it accentuates certain traits
of character and drives others into the background, but it neither
destroys nor creates. It is a training school which, taken in the
right way, brings out all that is best in a man, stiffens him to face
the battle of life as well as the battles of military service, and
strengthens self-confidence and self-respect. The men who are seen
to have suffered in character during their military training are by
no means examples from which one can cite the result of discipline
and army work, for it is not the training that is at fault, but the
inherent weakness of the men themselves. The social standing of the
majority of recruits joining the new army renders it ten times more
true of the Army of to-day than of the Army of yesterday, that military
training gives more than it demands, inculcates habits which, followed
in after life, are invaluable, and makes a man--in the best sense of
the word--of each one who joins its ranks.
One thing that officers and men alike in the new army should be made to
realise is that the possession of a good kit carries one half of the
way on active service--the things that carry the other half of the way
are not to be purchased. But the man who has undergone the rigours of
active service understands the value of good boots, good field-glasses,
well-fitting and suitable clothing, and really portable accessories to
personal comfort. These things, and an intelligent choice of them, go
far to make up the difference between the man successful at his work
and the failure, for although a bad workman is said to quarrel with
his tools a good workman cannot do good work with bad tools. In the
peculiarly exacting conditions entailed on men by active service, kit
and equipment should be of the best quality obtainable, and the choice
of what to take and what to leave behind is evidence, to some extent,
of the fitness of the man for his work. The most important item of all
is boots, and in fitting boots for active service one should be careful
to select a size that will admit of the wearer enjoying a night’s sleep
without removing his footwear. Care of the feet, and retention of the
ability to march, are quite as important as shooting abilities, for the
man who cannot march with the rest will not be in it when the shooting
begins. For the rest, it is wise to try, if not to follow, as often
as possible the tips given, by men who have been on active service,
with regard to the choice of kit and the little things that make for
comfort--that is, as far as compliance with these “tips” is compatible
with keeping the size of one’s outfit down. The seasoned man, when
talking of such subjects as kit and comfort, usually speaks out of his
own experience, and his advice is worth following. The golden rule in
the choice of an outfit for service is simply “as little as possible,
and that little good.”
This rule, by the way, used to be applied to the British Army in
another way: the new army, however, makes a difference in the matter of
size.