THE B.A.O.R.'S VIEWS
By W. G. MOORE
THE civilian lecturer to the Forces has to be careful not to generalise his impressions. The delivery of some forty lectures within a month means that he moves from one unit to another almost every day, and obtains quickly and easily what looks like a fair cross-section of Army opinion. Yet nowhere has he the time to settle down, or to feel that he is getting beyond the pleasantries of small talk to what the talkers really think. I am therefore relieved to fmd that " Captain, BA.O.R," writing on this subject in The Spectator a fortnight ago, confirms much of what had impressed me. Perhaps as a visitor I was more struck than anyone on the spot would be by the things that have actually got done in five months. Since the battle of Germany put the transport system of that country out of action, the Allies have created a new one• They have installed telephones, built bridges, repaired roads, and summoned the vehicles, the oil and the petrol required to move not only them- selves, their men and stores, but to clear parts of the battle area, to round up, disarm and in many cases to despatch homcwards, thou- sands of Germany's imported foreign workers. The progress achieved in all these things since May seems to have impressed even the Germans, and it means that our men are pretty busy,—less so in some areas than in others of course, but a great deal is being done.
Where the men were not busy I found a good deal of grumbling, and here again I can only underwrite the facts of the article " Winter's Tale." The soldier has something to grumble about ; he enjoys peace without the chief enjoyments of peace, without home contacts, without a fireside. It is the absence of these things that makes him lonely and that makes fraternisation such a problem. I was in Ger- many before the ban had been finally lifted, and now soldiers there can do what they did in Holland, " get their feet under somebody's table" as they put it. Only those who cannot realise the tedium of Army life will reproach them for this. And good contacts may take the place of bad. Officers told me that the opportunity to enter German homes would tend to lower the V.D. rate.
In spite of the grumbling, Army morale is clearly very high, much higher than home morale. This is quite natural. The soldier is conscious of a job well done, of victory fought for and achieved. The evidence of that victory is all around him, in the shot-up tanks and rusty engines and burnt-out cars that are lying about, in the smashed cities and bridges, and not least in the apathetic though dignified people who throng the sweets and crowd station plat- forms. I watched the picketing of two main Rhine crossings. The soldier's job, often performed single-handed, was to martial the traffic waiting to cross the single-track pontoons. He had somehow to organise within a narrow space four waiting lines of traffic, Army cars in one, civilian transport in another, vehicles suspected of carry- ing black market produce in a third, and the mob of pedestrians and cyclists in a fourth—an exacting job, Carried through, as it seemed to me (and I had to cross and wait frequently) with unfailing good temper. Yet it was only one of many instances of the British tech- nique of occupation, unobtrusive, efficient, a unique mixture of good humour and indifference.
It was in discussions about home affairs that one saw the limits of this self-confidence so evident in public. The men were the reverse of shy, keenly interested to hear what was going on at home, provided one approached it from the point of their particular interest, which is, of course, how to get back to a house and a job. This was the beginning and end of every discussion ; papers are read, visitors are questioned, for little else than news of the prospects at home and at work when they " get out." There is nothing surprising in this, but what did surprise me was the general failure to see that all questions of reconstruction are political questions. The political naivety and ignorance of the ordinary soldier must be met with to be believed. The things he wants (and very rightly wants), whether houses or jobs or schools or cheap commodities, he thinks are denied to him by the rich. The State (usually referred to as " they ") will not spend the money required to provide them. By far the most frequent question put to me was on the lines of " If they can spend millions a day on a war, why can't they do it for the things we need in peace? " All issues were simplified to this level. I found no sense of technical difficulties or of conflict of policies, a complete inability to think on political lines. A month with British troops only confirmed an opinion already formed than a main problem for tomorrow is that of adult education in politics.
The soldier is sceptical about his fate in civilian life, and he will surely be more so when he discovers how different that life is from the Army. For the modern Army takes care of a man, leaves him little to do on his own, few decisions to make and no awkward choices. Back in Civvy Street a man will have no welfare officer, he may not get a house at once, nor a job for long, nor much help with overcoming the estrangement of a five-year separation. The soldier seems to sense this situation, though he cannot do much about it. He distrusts the future. He distrusts equally certain things in the present, two perhaps in particular. In the first place the Press (his Press not being that which most of us read), which deceived him about the demob speed-up ; it infuriated him (and his home folk) with its tales and pictures of that fraternising which is still not widespread ; it told him how UNRRA had cleared the camps of " Displaced Persons "—who have proved the most awkward and arduous job of the British Army in Germany, carried through almost without help from UNRRA at all. Then he distrusts the civilian, who has neither been separated from his family nor conscripted ; him the soldier suspects of having earned soaring wages and of holding down a good job. Many men asked me why labour had not been conscripted ; many recalled D-Day experiences of dockers refusing to load ammunition after hours, or after a siren.
A man who distrusts the future does not welcome education. The new Army Education Scheme, as far as I could mark its progress, is making heavy weather ; it evokes small enthusiasm from the men and little more from the officers. Where pre-vocational courses have been started they are very popular. Bricklayers, carpenters, mechanics are naturally delighted to get tools in their hands once more. But the classes which do not involve practical work, classes in English, in mathematics, in German, are hanging fire, partly for lack of textbooks. And the political part of the education scheme, to my mind the vital part, arouses no keenness at all.
In a month of argument one comes across a good deal in the way of grouses and grumbles. Yet the abiding impression was not of the Army's hopes or fears, but of what it is doing. The machinery of the Occupation Army is most imposing. Convoys, bridges, petrol, food, all these seem inexhaustible and at hand wherever they are needed. As to the policy behind this machinery, I was not so sure. The dual system whereby the military government is taken out of the hands of the military commander, except at a very high level, obviously works better in some places than in others. It works well where the staff of military government is efficient and tactful, which is not always the case. It works badly where the garrison troops stand by, safeguarding law and order, but otherwise out of touch with the population, watching their colleagues get into difficulties. Like many British arrangements, it depends for success on liaison, unofficial co-operation, so that each party knows what the other is doing, and on the transmission of a clear policy from the top. In one area, schools and courts had been reopened, but industry remained paralysed because the Control Commission had not decided on the allotment of coal needed to restart the factories. Can a firm policy get going in time to win what the Field Marshal has called the battle of the winter? Will it be possible to evacuate the overcrowded cellars of the Ruhr cities in time to prevent famine and disease and the consequent disturbances which the Army will have to put down?
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