WHAT THE SOLDIER THINKS
SIR,—I don't know what the soldier thinks, but here are some impressions derived from nearly five years' service in the ranks and as an officer. I am another Captain, B.L.A., writing from the German frontier.
(r) The average soldier's discontent is due to a distrust of himself. Not on the battlefield, where he knows his job inside out and has leader- ship that has proved worthy of trust, but in the political field. Like the British public of the 19206, which Harold Nicolson accuses of " arrant thoughtlessness and irresponsibility in condemning the Versailles Treaty, which they had never studied and scarcely read," the average soldier has never studied politics and scarcely read a word of enlightened exposition or comment. Any officer who has led or attended A.B.C.A. discussions must surely support me in this. Tommy Atkins knows how to fight because be submitted to an unwelcome discipline for a good cause and was forced to learn. He does not know how -to carry out his political duties as a citizen because he has naturally never been forced to study politics, and he is both too little educated and too intellectually lazy to do so voluntarily. He either declines to take any interest or make any judgements, or he derives " knowledge and judgement " from the headlines of less responsible newspapers and cheap clap-trap of the Your M.P. type. His political " judgements " rre as valuable and as valid as his judgements on sculpture.
(2) The average soldier's deep-rooted and only partly conscious con- victions are vastly at variance with his expressed opinions. -Judged on his expressed opinions, he is a shallow, selfish and irresponsible materia- list. In reality he is a patriot, generous and semi-Christian. Even after years of pacifist vapours, Left hysteria and Right inertia he can listen to a Churchill in a dark hour, throw aside the hot-water bottles and shawls and realise he is still a man. Perhaps that is the most hopeful feature about the present situation.
(3) Home to the average soldier means, as Captain, B.L.A., says, " his family, his football, his beef and his fireside." It does not mean a country of which he is a responsible citizen He is surely the world's most stubborn conservative. He wants his old home, his old pub, his old job. This last I emphasise strongly, as it is a point I have encountered again and again, even among those who were from any point of view under- privileged before the war. The Leftists may picture him as profoundly stirred by schemes of social security ; the Tories may picture him deter- mined to abolish all controls as the totalitarian idols he went to war to crush. In reality, not one in twenty has ever thought or spoken for five minutes about either. What he left behind is what he wants to go back to in the vast majority of cases.
(4) His contempt for the B.B.C. and the newspapers cannot be ques- tioned. Partly this comes from his personal experience of their shocking unreliability and crazy over-optimism ; partly again from his diiinclination to study and understand the questions which radio and Press report and comment on.
(5) There is only one thing to be said about the average soldier's attitude to religion. It is vaguely hostile and as totally ignorant as his attitude to great music or drama.
(6) He is the salt of the earth.—Yours faithfully, ANOTHER CAPTAIN.
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