THE J])1 AT SUBALTERN. T HE anxious subaltern is leaving England
every day to join his battalion at the front. A novice about to mingle with a company of veterans, he dreads the curiosity, and even suspicion, inevitably aroused by the arrival of the untried officer among a seasoned unit. A solitary blunder may harden formless sus- picion into a settled conviction of his worthlessness. He knows that the world contains few more pathetic figures than the officer whose sense of uselessness is only accentuated by the affectation of respect demanded of his men by discipline. It is not that ex- hortation—" advice to young officers "—has found no place in the apprenticeship to his new profession. It has. But he recalls that the words of the Commandant of his school of instruction did not expose the root of the matter. Possibly the Commandant had never seen the front. Possibly he was an officer of senior rank invalided from it, and without the intuition to perceive the contingencies peculiar to a subaltern's life in the trenches. And across these general misgivings there flashes at times the more specific doubt as to the adequacy of his purely technical know- ledge. Memory of such predicament and of a year's subsequent experiences perhaps entitles the writer to add some detail to the outline of the ideal sketched for the edification of the "young officer."
The ideal subaltern embodies a blend of qualities moral and technical. But the relative importance of them varies with the varying phases of warfare. In the open fighting of Mons the exercise of technical skill found more ample scope than in the trench warfare, or even the Somme battle, of to-day. To read a map quickly, to judge a distance accurately, to control the fire of a platoon skilfully, to carry out and report on a reconnaissance —such in August, 1914, were crucial tests of soldierly merit. To-day an officer may be a child in such matters, but none the less an efficient platoon-leader. Not that even in August, 1914, could the highest degree of technical competence atone for lack of certain qualities of character, qualities without which an officer is a thing of vanity. It is simply a question of comparative values. What are these essentials ? Four words sum them up—courage, coolness, cheerfulness, and sympathy.
Of activq courage recent events are sufficient token. It is probably the most common of virtues. Most men can lead a platoon over the parapet bravely. The activity of mind and body deadens the nerves. The imagination has no time to conjure up pictures of mutilation and horror, such as haunt the mind during the passive endurance of a heavy bombardment. Although few men are wholly without fear, most can command the appearance of fearlessness when the blood runs hot. But there is a rarer, more deliberate courage. For example, two subalterns are resting in their dug-out in a communication trench behind the front line. They are off duty. (As a rule the subalterns of a company patrol the front line in turn, each of them while on duty being responsible for all the platoons and not merely his own.) Suddenly during Jones's spell of duty a bombardment of shells and mortars breaks the peacefulness of the front line. Smith at once leaves the grateful security of his dug-out and rushes into the smoke and turmoil of the fire-trench, where his platoon, crouching under the parapet and behind traverses, is passing through one of the most searching ordeals known to man. Brown stays in the dug- out. Now Brown can plausibly argue thus : "it is not my duty to go up to the front line "—which in a narrow sense is true- " it is certainly bad luck on Jones that this strafe should start during his spell of duty instead of mine or Smith's. Officers are scarce. Seeing me blown to bits will help nobody. I can do no good by going up." No immediate good, possibly. But one day the wheel will come full circle. "He doesn't take any risks," will be the verdict on Brown. Smith's platoon, though their words may be few, will not forget ; and one day he shall reap what he has sown. Such a dilemma is no hypothetical case. And the solution of it has made and marred officers.
Rarer still is the quality of coolness. When memory reviews the varied happenings of past months, it pauses longest over the recol- lection of sudden and grave crises. The subaltern reflects how once in the small and exacting hours of the morning he dimly saw a portion of his trenches metamorphosed in the twinkling of an eye by a mine explosion into a gaping crater ; how in dazed consterna- tion he watched the accompanying " barrage " scatter his solid parapet into leaping and flying sandbags, until he realized that on him lay the responsibility of coping with this emergency. Or else he recalls the night on which he abstractedly led his burdened platoon along a quiet road to the trenches until a flight of hissing " whizz-bangs " startled his homing thought into sense of immediate perils. Should he go on and ignore the shells ? Or should he try to find cover for his men ? If the first, he endangers their lives ; if the second, their moral. Such occasions are the downfall of many officers of undoubted courage. But if by a supreme effort of will a man can keep his head clear and his voice steady—no matter how loudly his heart may beat—his men will henceforward look to him as a natural leader, and, in Homer's words, "hearken unto him as though it were the voice of a god."
Cheerfulness, not the aggressive sort which irritates, but the quiet type that encourages, is on occasions a cardinal virtue. For example, a certain unit, after suffering for many months the rigours of that abominable desolation of mud and shell-holes called "The Salient," was withdrawn from the line for transfer to another theatre of war. The unit, marching back to billets, paid hilarious farewell to "Hell-fire Corner," "Crump Farm," and other familiar but abhorred spots. But on the eve of its departure for the promised land G.H.Q. had second thoughts. Bombs, gum-booth, and all the odious para- phernalia of trench warfare reappeared. Disillusioned and tired men plodded back through the mud to those shallow yet brimming ditches that did duty for trenches at Ypres during winter and waited for the inevitable bombardment. In such circumstances, when dis- appointment has sapped moral, unaffected cheerfulness and kindness on the part of the officers can do what rigorous discipline alone cannot in stemming insidious demoralization. The men will recognize in the serene demeanour of their officers an attempt to rescue them from the tyranny of their environment. In such conditions the cheerful face is really an outward sign of the sympathetic mind.
And sympathy will always bind an officer to his men with hoops of steel. To ask a man what his occupation was before the war or will be after it, to ask him about his leave or when his turn for it is due—in print these are cold and banal questions ; but the spoken word and the kindly manner will often break the crust of a soldier's reserve and assist a sensitive plant of affection in its upward struggle to the light. A sympathetic officer knows how liable are the best soldiers to attacks of depression. A man has returned from leave with no prospect of a second week of freedom ; or he may be sick with hope of leave deferred, weary already of the daily round of sentry-work and fatigues ; or he may be chafing at the apparent injustice of fines for some not wholly inexcusable losses of kit. In a word, he is "fed up." Yet a few words may exorcise the black spirit—upon so delicate a balance our emotional moods are poised. Again, the sympathetio officer, if while passing along a trench ho sees a man resting on the fuestep, will not ignore him. A nod and a word of casual greeting are enough to cause the soldier, who may hitherto have taken bis officer for granted, to watch his figure vanishing round a traverse with dawning interest. Possibly such incidents ought not so to influence men's estimates of their officers. The fact of it remains. And in some desperate moment of attack the doer of "these little unremembered acts of kindness" may see as his reward the devoted following of his men incline the scales of battle to victory.
And for two remoter reasons should an officer study his relations with his men. One is this. Our New Armies cannot hope to achieve the amazing discipline of the enemy, in Prussians the matured growth of centuries, in other Germans the fruit of fifty years' inten- sive cultivation. It is this which lies at the core of their tenacious fortitude and excellence in defence. Now our English way of life, while stimulating the merits of individuality, also breeds the defects of individualism. Six crowded months of training cannot bind a crowd of individuals into an organio unit, unless, as in Germany, discipline has set its stamp upon their character from infancy. But with the quality of sympathy between officers and men our New Armies can match a distinctively British characteristic against the national asset of their opponents.
The second reason is this. Many of us hope to see in future days a Britain regenerate as well as a Prussia destroyed. No doubt when the tumult dies there will be an ebb. Enthusiasms will falter and exaltations pass away. There will be reactions of thought and emotion, reversions to old habits. We shall know again the discord of classes and interests. There can be no great adjustment of social and economic problems without pain and bitterness. But throughout the welter of this ago of transition one factor will make for stability. The mutual knowledge and affection between officer and man will not wholly perish when one returns to his house and the other to his tenement, the one to his business and the other to his work. Both will have charted new expanses of human nature. A store of memories and friendships, a revelation to than of new sorts and conditions of men, they will regard as a cherished legacy of the Great War. The New Army is building better than it knows. It is building, if not indeed the houses of a new Jerusalem, at least a bridge across the gulf that two years ago defied the bridgcr.
But it is not of these ultimate things that the subaltern is thinking as he gazes for the first time on France. He is reflecting on more immediate needs. To give some relief to his importunate doubts and fears has been the purpose of these words. H.
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