Professional army

“ You can, therefore, appreciate the importance, the necessity, of every officer and noncommissioned officer doing everything that he possibly can during times of peace to qualify himself for his duties and responsibilities during times of war.
If we are going to have a good army we must have good regiments; to have good regiments we must have good battalions; to have good battalions we must have good companies—but to have good companies we must have efficient company officers and noncommissioned officers.
As stated before, everything in the life of the soldier leads to the field of battle. ”

“ A well-organized General Staff, through which the Commander exercises his functions, is essential to a successful modern army. However capable our division, our battalion, and our companies as such, success would be impossible without thoroughly co-ordinated endeavor. ”

“ Cadre Force, consisting of the General and Instructional Staff, a regiment of Artillery, small detachments of Engineers, Army Service Corps, Ordnance Corps, and of Army Medical Corps, for partially garrisoning the naval strategical bases, for technical duties, for maintenance of valuable stores and equipment, and, above all, for the instruction of the Militia and Volunteer forces during peace and for stiffening them in times of war. ”

“ The crowning impression which I carried away from that wonderful day was the enormous imperturbable confidence of the Army and its extraordinary efficiency in organization, administration, material, and personnel. I met in one day a sample of many types, an army commander, a corps commander, two divisional commanders, staff officers of many grades, and, above all, I met repeatedly the two very great men whom Britain has produced, the private soldier and the regimental officer. Everywhere and on every face one read the same spirit of cheerful bravery. ”

“ To these must be added the Royal Engineers, the Army Service Corps, the Royal Ordnance Department, the R.A.M.C., the Army Pay Corps, and other non-combatant units necessary to the domestic and general internal working of an army. To-day these various forces are increased to such an extent that no man outside the War Office can tell the strength of infantry, cavalry, and artillery ”

“ To-day, generals commanding armies rather search for honour in the field of duty—duty accomplished, orders obeyed. These simple formulæ have always been the watchwords of the soldier-unit, whether that unit be a man, a platoon, a company or a regiment. Now, with the limitless increase in the size of armaments, a unit may well be an Army Corps, or even a combination of Army Corps, and the highest aim of the general officer commanding such a unit must be—as of old—fulfilment of duty, obedience to orders. ”

“ It thus appears that the institution of a general staff as one of the organs of the management of an army is based upon a true analysis applying equally to all civilized armies, and to all ordered warfare. ”

“ They necessarily had to learn pretty thoroughly the army regulations, with the methods and forms of making returns and conducting business with the adjutant-general's office, with the ordnance office, the quartermaster's and subsistence departments, etc. In this ready knowledge of the army organization and its methods their advantage over the new volunteer officers was more marked, as it seemed to me, than in any and all other things. The routine of army business and the routine of drill had to be learned by every army officer. ”

“ The other, and equally important, is to secure for the file-leaders and captains of the force, and the great officers of the nation, men of proven abilities, who are pledged by their own careers to hold their followers up to their highest standard of performance and permit no lagging. With a view to these two ends the industrial army is organized. ”

“ A great and very important advance has already been made in bringing the regular army into close relations with the National Guard of the several States, and in the employment of regular officers in disseminating military education, both theoretical and practical, throughout the country. ”

“ However capable divisions, battalions, and companies may be as units, success would be impossible unless they worked together. A well organized General Staff trained for war has not hitherto existed in our army. Under the Commander in Chief this staff must carry out the policy of the army as a whole and direct all the details of its preparation, support, and operation. As models to aid us, we had the veteran French General Staff and the experience of the British who had formed a staff to meet the demands of a great army. ”

“ Even the regular officers, who have some idea of military efficiency, rather derived from education and foreign travels than from actual experience, bristle up and talk proudly of the patriotism of the army, and challenge the world to show such another, although in their hearts, and more, with their lips, they own they do not depend on them. ”

“ The business of the General Staff is, in war, to regulate the movements of the army and to attend to the correct registration of material for war history. In peace, the time of the officers who compose it is devoted to a profound post-graduate study of the science and the art of warfare. ”

“ When we look back and reflect how very few officers of the hundreds of thousands who have served in the British army during the last two or three centuries, have acquired that knowledge of the military art which qualifies an officer to form the plan of a war, we are forced to conclude, either that but few officers ever attain so much knowledge of their profession, or that opportunities have been wanting to develope their abilities in this peculiar department of their art. ”

“ But I cannot understand a master of military administration such as he was, a soldier equipped with exceptional knowledge of organization and with wide experience of the requirements of a British army in the field, sending a considerable body of troops off oversea to a theatre of operations, where fighting might be expected almost as soon as they landed, without making provision for their base and communications. ”

“ For fighting, you require, besides the field officers, at least two Englishmen, or better still, three per company. It is, I own, possible to increase the normal complement by free borrowing from the staff corps, and from the rest of the army, but every soldier will tell you that this is a mere shift; the officers must know their men, and the men their officers. ”

“ Of all the places of public instruction in the country—in a national point of view—it is the most important; for while it furnishes to the army a corps of officers acknowledgedly unsurpassed in military and scientific attainments by that of any service in Europe—officers, whose names are synonymous with modesty and honour, it is of incalculable importance in furnishing to the country, commanders and instructors for the militia in time of war, and engineers for the constant plans of public improvement in peace. ”

“ One may count the Army in peace time as a great training school out of which men come moulded to a definite pattern, and yet retaining their individuality. But active service is a fire through which men pass, emerging on the far side purified of little aims to a greater or less extent, according to the material on which the fire has to work. ”

“ Then when the companies are perfect they take their places in the battalion, and the battalions in due time in the regiment and in the brigade. The crown of the whole training is formed by the manoeuvres, in which divisions and occasionally army corps are assembled for practice, resembling as nearly as may be the operations of actual war. ”

“ Skill this required; skill equivalent to German skill; the skill which you cannot command in a month after calling for a million volunteers, but which grows through years of organization.
Shall I call the general in chief command General X? This is according to the custom of anonymity. A great modern army like the French is a machine; any man, high or low, only a unit of the machine. ”

“ The Corps of Engineers, the Supply and Transport Corps, and the Ordnance and the Army Medical Service, are recruited from those classes who exercise in civil life the functions which they are required to discharge in war. ”

“ Expecting to find an army without organization, and officers without suitable military knowledge, he was surprised to find well-drilled battalions, and officers fully competent in all departments of their service. ”

“ But, besides these objects, I must draw your attention, in a very particular manner, to the state of discipline of the troops. The discipline of every army, after a long and active campaign, becomes in some degree relaxed, and requires the utmost attention on the part of the general and other officers to bring it back to the state in which it ought to be for service; but I am concerned to have to observe, that the army under my command has fallen off, in this respect, in the late campaign, to a greater degree than any army with which I have ever served, or of which I have ever read. ”

“ I would then style them, and cause them to act as chiefs of engineers or artillery, and which rank they should hold for the same number of years as lieut.-colonels commanding regiments, when, like them, they should become major-generals; and enabling them also to take advantage of the retirement from the country, and of the system to be proposed for the military fund, these accomplished officers, if they thought fit to remain upon the effective list, could become available for staff or any other appointments the same as other generals, and at the same period of life. ”

“ It is very desireable, that the soldiers should not lose the habit of marching; and the divisions should march ten or twelve miles twice in each week, if the weather should permit, and the roads in the neighbourhood of the cantonments of the division should be dry. But I repeat, that the great object of the attention of the [Pg 202] general and field officers must be, to get the captains and subalterns of regiments to understand and perform the duties required of them, as the only mode by which the discipline and efficiency of the army can be restored and maintained during the next campaign. ”

“ The report of the Secretary of War will bring you acquainted with the condition of that important branch of the public service. The Army may be regarded, in consequence of the small number of the rank and file in each company and regiment, as little more than a nucleus around which to rally the military force of the country in case of war, and yet its services in preserving the peace of the frontiers are of a most important nature. ”

“ For example, at the time when I am writing these pages, a young gentleman, who is an intimate friend of mine, and who has received a scientific education, is diligently preparing himself to pass an examination for a commission in the artillery next month. Being obliged to serve in the army in any case, and having a right degree of amour-propre, he wishes to be an officer, and in a scientific branch of the service. ”

“ I believe it to be established by the experience of Europe as well as our own that it is impracticable to organize and administer armies with efficiency without the aid of a general staff, permanent in its character, trained in its duties, aspiring to promotion in its own corps, and responsible to the head of the Department. Such a staff should be composed of a small body of officers, whose education, experience, activity, and special adaptation to their duties render them peculiarly competent to perform functions on which an army depends for its capacity to act with vigor. ”

“ We met officers in every branch of the service,—infantry, cavalry, artillery, flying corps, ordnance, army service, medical, engineers, construction, water transport, etc., and thereby obtained a splendid idea of what was going on, and how the various branches of the service worked together and viewed any given problem.
Some of these views were quite at variance with one another. For instance the artillery man looked upon the infantryman as the man who protected his guns and kept off the enemy while he killed them. ”

“ To sum them up—an Army full of robust qualities, an Army of young athletes, inured by their own home-life to the physical hardships of the trenches, regardless alike of cold, fog and mud. An Army, too, of formidable size, since to-day its numbers are greater than those of the whole British Expeditionary Force of 1914. ”

“ An old European officer, one who has followed the profession of arms from his very boyhood, said to me to-day: 'In one essential respect, sir, I believe that in a short time these colored soldiers will surpass any we have in our army—I mean in subordination—without which no army can be effective. We are in the habit of carrying our citizenship with us into the field, and that begets an amount of undue familiarity between officers and men that is often destructive of obedience. ”

“ There must also be an administrative officer at home, whose function will be to procure and convey to the army in the field all that it requires—food, ammunition, clothing and pay, fresh men and fresh horses to replace casualties. ”

“ The training received by an officer of any of the fighting branches of the Army at the Staff College may fit him to assist in the planning and execution of operations, provided due regard is paid to questions of supply, transport, housing, etc. ”

“ The duties of the staff in all its various branches belong to the movements of troops, and the efficiency of an army in the field would materially depend upon the ability with which those duties are discharged. ”

“ The Military Forces of the Great Powers have now grown so large that a further development of organization has become necessary. They are therefore divided in war into separate Armies. Army, in this new sense, does not mean, as it used to, the whole Force, for which, indeed, some other49 word than “Army” is urgently needed. An Army is simply the highest Unit in the organization of a great host in the field. ”