MEN INTO OFFICERS
By J. L. HODSON
IN choosing men to be trained for officers in our army—at all events in this country—the task is made no easier by the fact
that very few of them have been in battle, Or even under fire, in the normal sense. (Being bombed from the air is not quite the same thing, and even of that many of our soldiers have had little experience.) In the fourth year of the last war men were streaming home from France to become officer cadets. They knew, and their officers knew, their behaviour under stress of war. Without this knowledge today, the choice of men for commissions must still be made, and I do not suggest our War Office selection board (with one of which I spent a recent day) make many blunders. A few borderline cases there are bound to be—the man too highly strung may break or he may win the V.C., but his Officer Training Unit, to which he next goes, can reasonably be expected to supply further evidence. What these new selection boards have already done is to weed out in advance those on whom the 0.C.T.U.s were wasting valuable time. Of the batch of forty men I saw examined nearly half were rejected. The qualities of leadership, that combination of intelligence and character and personality, were not there in high enough degree.
For there is nothing haphazard about this selection board. The men come for forty-eight hours. Each man is seen by the President, in this case a Lt.-Col., D.S.O. of Signals in the last war and an experienced educationist. The man being tested—from lance- corporal to warrant officer—brings a chit from his own C.O. It may be a strong recommendation, it may be rather non-committal. Obstacle courses both physical and mental now await him ; he must deliver a lecturette, tale part in discussion groups (Do you think the bayonet out of date? Would you use gas? Are you in favour of conscription after the war?), go through the intelligence tests, take part in bridging a ravine, probably (though not inevitably) spend half an hour or so with the psychiatrist. The man who could win approval from an old-fashioned selection board in a ten-minute interview will not necessarily do so here. Nor will his rank or parentage or school count for much, if anything.
This selection board works at a country-house. A cowshed has been turned into a dining-hall; old weapons from the Tower of London are on the walls—muskets, pistols, swords, armour, &c., making a brave show. An obstacle course has been created in a copse ; on it a combination of agility and common sense are needed —and some courage. At one point you must leap from a kind of tight-rope to catch another rope swinging in mid-air. To cross a ditch and a fence appliances are needed, and provided, but to use them aright you must think. Nobody minds you making mistakes, but you are expected not to make the same ones twice. I watched the candidates sweating and toiling round this course, a Czech boy among them. He had done well in discussion, speaking in good English, but now he was somewhat stumped ; courage was there but not ingenuity. Another floundered along, but a touch of the scrimshanker was in him ; he dodged the mid-air jump, and he was a good onlooker, but not much more, at the bridge- building. Most of them had some devil and native wit, however. The way they used logs and ropes to bridge that gulf was first-rate. Here, men wearing sergeant's stripes were outstanding.
They were all pretty roughspun men—the conventional stage officer, a trifle "la di da " (as the North has it) was not to be found among them. Out of forty or so, I doubt if there were half a dozen public-school men. At the discussion group the Colonel smoked his pipe and listened while a group of other judging officers made their notes. The men caught the chairman's eye and got up and said their say, speaking, usually, Without ease. This was on conscription. Only one, a sergeant-major who kept his mouth shut, voted against. But the virtual unanimity favouring this (though some preferred it from 16 to 18 and others from 20 to 22) was equally strong against communal feeding post-war—they spoke of life being based on the family, of the wife's desire to cook for her husband (laughter over this). Some were on their feet with eager- ness, some were never on their feet. But the first were not neces-
sarily thought highest of, nor the latter condemned. The Scots maintained, often enough, their taciturnity.
Before they reached the psychiatrist something was known of them—their quality in intelligence-tests, some opinion of their work over the obstacles. Each had been asked to write down what he imagined a friend would say of him and what an enemy. One declared an enemy would describe him as a bumptious little twirp. This man was asked how we shall win the war. He replied that it would be by starting with a gigantic commando raid on the French coast, and that coincident with it, another even bigger raid would start in Belgium and smash its way right through to Germany. He didn't profess to know how many divisions would be needed. Several of them were asked what our men's morale is like. They all said—" Browned off on the surface but good underneath—a Second Front would do all that's needed." (In passing, I think that judgement is sound enough. Men who have visited our divisions going overseas tell me they are well pleased with them.) The psychiatrist handled them like a father confessor ; he didn't miss much.
Intelligence is not enough—among the most intelligent one in four fails because he lacks personality ; character is not enough— not more than one in forty will get through on character allied to nothing else. Those with the finest qualities combining both charac- ter and brains appear to number not more than some fifteen per cent. ; a further forty per cent, are reasonably good. We are keeping up a fairly high standard. It is certain that some of our officers even up to the rank of colonel and brigadier would not have shone in the tests now being applied. We might well begin to test them all up to this rank—and weed out those (if any) who fail to make the grade.
One or two other points arise for reflection—the first whether we do not need schools for leadership to which these men might be sent for a while before passing on to the 0.C.T.U. If a man or youth has done nothing more than pass his examination at a school and moved on to a steady and safe job in industry or com- merce, he may never have been faced with making a hard decision, much less with improvisation in a rough-and-tumble life in the open involving hunger and risk to life and limb. Yet leadership in this sort of existence is what he has to show. A month in the open "living wild," with the command of his- group from time to time would help him to feel his feet. (I am told of a youth, after such a life for a few weeks, hunting for the dictionary that he might erase the word "impossible.") The second point is this—nn who can be trained into good army officers are not unlimited in number.
We are in the fourth year of the war. If the army cannot find all its own men for officers, cannot the R.A.F. or other services help? Of those who begin their training as pilots and observers a considerable number fail because of some disability which, while it unfits them for flying, by no means unfits them for commissions in the army. A good many grounded men in the R.A.F. would make fine infantry (or other) officers. The difficulty of transferring them from one service to another could doubtless be overcome. It is one war, not two or three, that we are fighting.
The method of this selectian board struck me as both sensible and fair, and I think it true to say that the candidates find it so.
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