CAN ENGLISHMEN ORGANISE?
IT is perfectly natural and perfectly right that England should admire itself a little for the Volunteer fete of Saturday last. A truth does not become a falsehood because it is too often repeated, and the fact that fifty-five thousand Englishmen deeply engaged in affairs should, without hope of reward or fear of punishment, train themselves as soldiers, till they are capable of being concentrated at twenty-four hours' notice on one spot, and in readiness, as far as they were concerned, for
action, is a most creditable feat. It is still more creditable, that if need arose, the fifty-five thousand could have been raised to two hundred thousand, and that the movement has now continued without a break or a falling-off for twenty-one years, till there must now be at least 300,000 men within the Island perfectly competent, if England were invaded, to fill up the ranks of the Regular regiments till every battalion should be 2,000 strong, with as many more in Reserve. But the most creditable and perhaps most beneficial feature of the Review was that there was no disaster or blunder, that the Staff did their work, and the Railways did their work, and the men did their work, so successfully, that it actually seemed as if Englishmen could organise. A check was given to the idea that Englishmen must muddle, which, ever since the Crimean war, has become so rooted, that it exercises a distinctly bad influence on national opinion and on all military departments. The country puts up with inefficiencies in the Army, with enormous expendi- ture without result, and with defeats or quasi-defeats abroad, under some impression that they are due to the national character, that they cannot be helped, and that though sixty thousand undisciplined men can be carried to the Crystal Palace, entertained, and fed, without a blunder, the same feat cannot be performed with men in uniform, acting under orders. The evidence for the rooted belief that Englishmen cannot organise is exceedingly small. They do organise. The mechanism of the British Post-office which covers the whole world, works like that of a watch. The Railways pour into and out of London a million of passengers a day, passengers who insist on doing as they like, without check or accident. The Admiralty never loses hold of a Fleet scattered in every sea. The organisation of Trade has reached a point at which a demand for freight in Melbourne is felt in London next morning, and money paid in at noon in Lombard Street is at 3 p.m. drawn by correspondents at Calcutta, Hong Kong, Melbourne, or Tobolsk. The mechanism of gigantic establish- ments like the Docks never breaks down, while that daily miracle, the supply of London with food, is so perfectly carried on, that for twenty years it has been arrested but once, and then only par- tially and for a few hours ; and still the practice of keeping no stocks of perishable goods, that is, of relying wholly on organisation, is pushed to a dangerous extreme. If a capital under siege is to be saved from extremities, Englishmen save it. If a Government wishes to be certain that a most delicate work— say, the incessant watching of dykes—shall be performed, so to speak, automatically, it picks out an Englishman to preside. If a great company needs a railway rapidly completed, it applies to an English contractor. The organisation of India, which from the official point of view is so wonderful, it being pos- sible to move the whole Empire to its remotest districts by a telegram, is English work. No one expects that his letters will not be delivered, or that his friends will be delayed on their journeys, or that his commercial orders will remain un- fulfilled, or that the Queen's ships will be out of the way when wanted, or that any defect of organisation will occur, except when the Army is required to account for its existence. Then, and then only, Englishmen habitually expect a muddle,—that the regiments will not be ready, or that the men will not be numerous enough, or that the supplies will be misdirected, or that in some way or other there will be either a disaster, or a sudden demand for money, energy, and ex- traneous aid. A ship is thought of as a machine which will go while the motive-power lasts, but a regiment is thought of as a pack-horse, which must be watched and fed and urged and restrained at every moment, and will then in all pro- bability come down on its knees, or meet with an impassable block.
Is it not the fair deduction that the English capacity for organisation is not applied in Military matters, that somewhere or other there is some fatal defect which prevents the national efficiency from displaying itself in the Army ? Why else, when every other series of arrangements required by the State or demanded by the people is perfected till it works automatic- ally, should this one always be jarring and getting out of gear? We believe the deduction is true, and that the root of the mischief, of the enormous expenditure without result, can best be sought by a comparison between the management of the Army and that of every other British organism of the same extent. When that comparison is made, we shall find, we believe, that in every successful English organisation three ideas are obeyed, which in the Army are either rejected, or not practically carried out. One is that there is always at the top a final authority, be it Board, or Committee, or Manager, which can issue orders of any kind, reconcile any difference, and dismiss any defaulter. There is no such authority in the Army, which, whatever the official theory may be, is in practice governed by three powers,
— the agent of Parliament, the agent of the Crown, and the opinion of that great Club, the aggregate body of officers. The second idea is that any one who fails shall be dismissed pitilessly, without any reference to his needs, or his claims, or benevolence, or anything else, except the interests of the work
— this is carried out in the Navy, till the captain who loses his ship is tried, be the tempest never EO high—and this is absent from the Army, where not only are officers never cashiered for failure, but the chiefs hesitate even to dismiss commissaries and purveyors who have left regiments without supplies. And the third idea is that dismissal shall be a severe penalty, shall mean, in fact., temporary ruin. Did any one ever know a chief clerk, or controller, or other official responsible, ruined for spoil- ing an expedition by inefficiency, or neglect, or quarrels with other Departments? Never ; or if there ever was such an instance, he was publicly declared in Parliament an injured man, and the whole sting of his downfall taken away. Until the Minister, with a professional Board under him, is absolute, so far as all below him are concerned, and dismissal for in- capacity is unhesitating, and responsible officers are either sufficiently paid to make dismissal terrible, or punished with imprisonment, there will be no certain efficiency in the Army, for none of the principles will be carried out which make English organisation succeed.
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