Staff

“ If I were asked to{362} sum up, in a few words, the things that differentiate a well run from a poorly run institution I should say, first, the existence of a staff composed of persons of this third variety, and secondly a chief executive who appreciates and uses them. A progressive executive with a staff of assistants who faithfully obey orders and do nothing more will not go far. ”

“ The importance to the Army of a competent Staff can be judged from the above account of their duties. The Staff forms the nervous system of the Command. The better trained the Staff, the more free will the General be to concentrate his attention on the situation, and his Subordinate Commanders to carry out his plans with co-operating intelligence. Good Staff Officers, it has been well said, are eyes, ears, and hands to their Chief. ”

“ Under present conditions we, staff and special service officers, have to turn our hand to every kind of job as occasion demands, and one man has to do the ordinary work of half a dozen different offices. ”

“ It is true that you have hired a couple of men and a huge waggon. But these gentlemen are professionals. They direct the operation. They are the headquarters' staff, so to speak. Occasionally they take a hand in the game and then you wish they hadn't. ”

“ For, my boy, the unit system of organization on the Harriman Lines, of which you have read more or less, is primarily a substitution of the modern chief of staff idea for the grown, dwarfing, irrational government by chief clerks. [1]
The unit system of organization requires that an official, whether the head of the unit or an assistant, shall, when absent on the line, be represented at headquarters by the senior or chief assistant of the unit. Such senior or chief assistant is in effect, though not in name, the chief of staff. ”

“ The other path, study of the languages, is a rugged and tortuous one, still you have only to plod steadily along its length, and, sooner or later, you must come to a 'staff appointment.' Bien entendu, I suppose you to be destitute of or deficient in Interest whose magic influence sets you down at once a heaven-born Staff Officer, at the goal which others must toil to reach. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It is one of the duties of the general staff to attend to the material well-being of the troops, so as to secure their being at all times in condition to march or to fight. The heads of the several departments specially concerned with this care can work efficiently only in so far as they are kept in touch of the military situation. ”

“ Numbers of zealous, meritorious, and valuable officers have made the duties of the general staff objects of special study; have embraced the staff as a branch of the profession in which under existing laws they are entitled to promotion for merit and long service, just as the line officers have a right to promotion in their branch. ”

“ These remarks, relative to the requirements for an effective staff, pertain to all grades of organization. The staff officers at the headquarters of the army organize general arrangements and supervise the operations of subordinate officers of their department at the headquarters of corps; these have more detailed duties, and, in their turn, supervise the staffs of the divisions; the duties of these again are still more detailed, and they supervise the staffs of brigades ”

“ A consequence of the selection by which the corps is composed, and of the requirement of practical familiarity with the duties of leadership and with the life and spirit of the troops, is the constant passage of officers to and fro between regimental and general staff service, and their alternate employment in the various branches of the general staff itself. ”

“ The officers so far under discussion belong to the administrative staff and are therefore under the supervision of the director, with the exception possibly of the cloak-room boy, although his duties of catalogue and ticket seller and any sealing or stamping of envelopes he may do bring him under this class. And here a very important point is to be considered and that is, that in any organization, to be efficient each individual must know to whom he or she is to be responsible. ”

“ When any great event is transpiring in another land or another part of this country, and long messages are coming in concerning it, the staff has to be increased, and for this purpose men are drafted from the day staff. ”

“ And, the principle once recognized that staff organization is the only road to infallibility, the institution of an additional staff for the study of so vital a matter must inevitably have followed. The existence of one competent, impartial, and impersonal expert body would automatically have resulted in the creation of another. ”

“ Two separate organizations existed with parallel functions--the 'general' more occupied in giving direction to his troops than in providing for their material wants, which he regarded as the special province of the staff, and the 'intendant' (staff) often working at random, taking on his shoulders a crushing burden of functions and duties, exhausting himself with useless efforts, and aiming to accomplish an insufficient service, to the disappointment of everybody. ”

“ Staffs or Staves, stāvz) : a body of skilled officers whose duty it is, under orders from the commanding officers of various grades, to arrange the movements and supply of the various bodies which go to make up an army: a similar body of persons in any undertaking, acting under a manager or chief (the last two meanings have pl. Staffs, stafs) .—ns. Staff′-captain, the senior grade in the navigating branch in the British navy; Staff′-coll′ege, a college where military officers are trained in the higher branches of professional knowledge, and prepared for holding staff-appointments ”

“ The organization of such a department depends entirely upon the number of applicants and employees with which it must deal and the character of the work to be done. Suppose, for example, we have a factory with two thousand employees, seventy-five per cent of them skilled, fifteen per cent of them unskilled, and ten per cent office employees. The work of such a department could be very well carried on by one employment supervisor, one assistant supervisor, one clerk and record-keeper, and part of the time of one stenographer. The employment supervisor is a staff officer. ”

“ Officers of the headquarters staff should know the position of every division or detachment each night; their composition and strength, and the names of their commanders, etc.
In communicating orders to others, staff-officers must speak and write in the name of their generals. They must remember that they have no power of themselves to confer favors, and that all patronage rests with the general. In theory they are merely his agents, and, although, in practice, officers of importance have much in their power, they should be careful to prevent its being generally known. ”

“ The personnel of the staff was considered to be of the greatest importance, and, in the selection of men, the requirements desired were: experience in the construction and operation of railroads, thorough technical training, high standing in the Profession, as shown by membership in the American Societies of Civil or Mechanical Engineers, or of other Societies of high standing, and high moral character. Politics, residence in the State, or local influence, had absolutely no weight in the selection of any of the men. ”

“ Listen to what the Chief of Staff of the Army has to say about this in the preface to the Field Service Regulations: "Officers and men of all ranks and grades are given a certain independence in the execution of the tasks to which they are assigned and are expected to show initiative in meeting the different situations as they arise. ”

“ If they come in here and find someone that they don't particularly want working here -- I don't even know who that would be, but there are a fair number of career staff here, and they could certainly make their own decisions about staffing when they get in here. ”

“ Suffice it to say that at present the hardest of all problems is to keep line and staff in economical balance. Staff departments then may within themselves exercise line functions. This grows rather from necessities imposed by size than from inherent nature of function. The first staff officer was an adviser and exercised no authority, except that of polite inquiry, because there was no one whom he could properly command. ”

“ Visits are paid to workshops, fortresses, continental battlefields, &c., and staff tours are carried out. Officers of the non-mounted branches attend riding school, and students can be examined in any foreign languages they may have previously studied. They are also attached for short periods to arms of the service other than those to which they belong, and attend at staff offices to ensure their being conversant with the work done there. ”

“ SCENE THIRD.—AN ELEVATED PLATEAU, DOTTED WITH HEAVY OAKS, WEST OF THE PROPHET'S TOWN. Enter three of HARRISON'S staff Officers.
1ST OFFICER. Well, here's the end of all our northward marching!
2ND OFFICER. A peaceful end, if we can trust those chiefs Who parleyed with us lately.
3RD OFFICER. Yes, for if They mean to fight, why point us to a spot At once so strong and pleasant for our camp? ”

“ The essential feature of the Prussian staff system consists in the classification of duties out of which it has arisen. Every general in the field requires a number of assistants, collectively forming his staff, to relieve him of matters of detail, to act as his confidential secretaries, and to represent him at places where he cannot be himself. The duties of command are so multifarious that some consistent distribution of functions among the officers of a large staff is indispensable. ”

“ The General Staff of an army in the field is so placed that within wide limits it can control what the public will perceive. It controls the selection of correspondents who go to the front, controls their movements at the front, reads and censors their messages from the front, and operates the wires. ”

“ A staff of office signifying authority. Its form, that of a heavy club, indicates its original purpose and use in dissuading from dissent. ”

“ Appointment of Temporary Staff
Recognizing the ability and faithful service of the temporary staff under the Executive Secretary and the need for the staff members to be informed soon of their status in the Secretariat ”

“ But there was no subdivision of functions in the modern sense. A staff was a group of officers attached temporarily to headquarters and available for any mission which the commander thought fit to give them, and in the highly centralized armies of those days these missions (as regards junior officers) were practically limited to orderly work and reconnaissance, especially topographical reconnais- sance. ”

“ The nucleus of the staff of operators is a small body of Royal Engineers, under their own officers, comprising about fifty military men, with occasional assistance from others—well organised into superintendents, inspectors, clerks, linesmen, storemen, artisans, and labourers. ”

“ Accordingly the great general staff has become a school of generalship, from which have emanated a series of masterpieces of military history and historical criticism, while its individual members have produced valuable works dealing with the various branches of the theory of the art of war. ”

“ If proper functioning of staffs is generally understood, and if staffs are correctly organized to perform their functions, the basis for their sound organization will become a matter of general understanding. Such organization, so understood, becomes a powerful influence in behalf of unity of effort. ”

“ The officers of a staff belong to the adjutant-general's branch or to the quartermaster-general's branch, but no rational criterion exists by which to discover whether a particular function falls to one branch or to the other. That this is an evil is evident, because it is manifest that there can be no scientific training for a group of duties which have no inherent affinity with one another. ”

“ The staffing of the department requires just as much consideration as that of any other, and the all too frequent and often unavoidable practice of employing the youngest boys and girls at the charging counters or desks is much to be deprecated even when it cannot be altogether avoided. ”

“ The internal affairs of the army are indeed one department, but the position of head of that department, while it could properly be filled by a Commander-in Chief, is not and cannot be identical with that of the minister who personifies the Cabinet in relation to the army. ”