THE " LIAISON " OF IDEAS.
I WAS sitting in my rooms, anxiously waiting for a bell to ring, then to hear footsteps coming up the stairs two at a time, and then for the door to be burst open as it used to be by Seton when we lived together, and the delay was getting on my nerves. We had been at the same school, after that at Oxford, then we parted for a time, and then lived together in rooms in London, each leading his own life. A perfect understanding existed between us, something very subtle and iudssuribabla, an odd mixture of love and toleration.
When war came we took it for granted that we should join the same 'regiment, and see the war through side by side. We went through the grind of drill together, and out to Franca together by the same boat. Then our ways parted ; we went to different companies. We survived three months in the trenches, and then I was wounded. During those months we had enjoyed our soldier. ing, and had tasted all the experiences available, front trench raids to being heavily shelled, and we felt we were becoming veterans. All this time, between ourselves alone, we had eagerly debated the question of what we called " the great adventure "- the day when we should climb over the parapet, walk across that strip of mystery in front, and see for ourselves what existed on the other side. Our curiosity was roused by a mixture of wishing to go through a big attack, and intense desire to learn how these men whom we never saw lived, and also how they fought and died. We talked impersonally of our own chances ; it is the only sane way to face this war. I think the wisest thing is to say you expect to bo killed and believe that you won't be ; there is something in it of that hubris you are told about when you learn Greek, and it is a great comfort. I was hit before the attack, and so was denied the great adventure ; but Seton had been through it and survived, and he was coming that night to tell me all about it.
At last he arrived, and we revelled in each other's company, saying little, but feeling completely happy. We talked trivialities, discussed our common friends, and he told me of the fate of many of my old companions who had tried the great adventure and would return no more. " I can't tell you to-night about the great attack," Seton said, "and all I felt while it was going on. I will keep that till we have the maps and can follow it carefully. Also, my mind is more full of the conclusions I have drawn from it than anything else, and I have been longing to pour them out to you, though I know it won't do any good ; bit at any rate it will relieve my feelings. I know now what I only felt before ; every soldier who thinks knows it too ; I believe the Staff themselves know it. I know that the work of the Generals and the Higher Command is to prepare plans, see that the men are trained, and bring them to the fighting-line as perfect in mind and body as is pomade, to link the infantry and the artillery by a system which is intelligent and flexible, and to see that each knows the other's work sufficiently to produce close eo-operation without recrimination, and other countless work, enough to occupy the mind and body of any man to the breaking-point. But I know something more—that the minute the attack is launched the Higher Command, even down to the Battalion Commander, have no more control over the situation, that the battles are won by the Company Commanders, the platoon loaders, and the wonderful private soldier. We are taught this in our text-books, and I remember that the Higher Command con- trols by the use of his reserves ; but we are apt to forget these things and all it means.
The old battalion went in nine hundred strong and came out two hundred. Of the two hundred, fifty had seen the fighting from a dietance, but had not been in it. We went in with twenty officers, we came out with six ; of these three watched, but took no part in the fighting ; that is to say, only one hundred and fifty men and three officers were alive to tell the tale of what they had gone through, what they had seen, and what conclusion& they had drawn from it. As we are a very diffident race, I suppose there may have been six of the survivors who had formed any ideas, and probably not one who had the courage to brave the channels of officialism in an attempt to put his ideas before the proper authorities.
1 hear the Division will be put through it again in three weeks' time. Is it likely that those survivors will survive again ? Would any insurance company care to take a risk on it ? I don't think so. What is the result ? Not only are the bodies of these men destroyed, but, what is far more valuable, their ideas, which are lost for ever. When a scientist submits himself to a dangerous experiment for the purpose of obtaining knowledge, he makes the moat elaborate arrangements to record his experiences in case he dies. He realizes that though his body may die, his idea will live for ever. We lose sight of the fact that the modern battle, anyhow of the kind now in vogue in this trench warfare, is commanded, won, and lost from the front, and not from the rear, that the life of an infantry officer is very short and that his ideas are very valuable, and that he has no channel through which to give expression to them. Most people will say, what floods of trash would pour in if a channel were provided. Of course it would; but amongst the trash would be ideas that might save many lives and possibly win the war. The Army to-day is full of brains and ideas : all ranks abound in men brilliant in some civil line of life. We want to tap the brains of these mon and encourage them to give the nation their ideas. It needs careful and sympathetic treatment. It seems a British trait to classify any one with an idea as a lunatic. We ought rather to follow the teachings of our law and consider them sane till they are proved mad. Working on such lines, we should in due course comb out the stupid and retain the sensible suggestions, suffer a few fools gladly for the purpose of securing something vital.
Now I am going to tell you how to do it ! At present there are, I believe, two departments blindly groping in this direction; one has to do with inventions, the other with trench warfare, the splendid conceptions of a splendid man who had vision ; lent they don't get there, as the Americans say. Why ? Because the brain that invented them and knew the need of sympathy is withdrawn, and they have become departments in all the glacial meaning of that word. I have often thought what a splendid term 'the Service' is, but when it is used no one thinks what it really moans. It doesn't mean being dressed in uniform or belonging to a profession that labels you one stratum above your fellow-men in manners and deportment. All that nonsense Ina vanished. It should, and does, mean that you belong to a society devoted to service, first of your King and country, then of your fellow-officers and men, and especially of those who are your junior& The finest soldier who commands is serving all the time. It is a kind of genealogical table reversed ; the King sets the example of service at the bottom and the private soldier at the top. Of courav there is one portion of the Army which should be the example of all in service, and that is the Staff ; sometimes this is overlooked.
In America great companies who have succeeded have a watch- word : ' It isn't success, it is service.' They have realized that to get the best results out of business you must serve your customer. As they say, service pays dividends ; so it does in everything ; there are different kinds of dividends ; but service always earns a dividend of the right kind. The man who has for the time survived the great adventure must be served ; if he has ideas, arrangements mustilee made to go and fetch them ; not ask him to find out for himself with whom he has to communicate, not treat him as a lunatic when ho does present himself or write, not by official coldness and an endless routine of delays crush the spark which is in him which makes him wish to help us. Think 1 In two or three weeks he may be dead and his ideas destroyed !
I should choose a man who has been through the great adventure, a man of tact and sympathy. I should make him a kind of Liaison °fiber of Ideas between these two departments and the men in the trenches He would live, not in London, but in France; he would move from division to division along the British front, and when he arrived at a new division, that division's General would send out circular letters, like a great departmental store. to all the units under his command, inviting officers and men when in rest to submit their ideas to the Liaison Officer, who would listen, make notes, and in due course pees them on to the two departments. All suggestions, good or bad, would be heard, and the donor would be invariably thanked and informed by letter as to the result decided on. A wonderful position to hold, requiring an exceptional man ; yet we have hundreds of them. I hardly like to think how much that man could do ; he would save count-lees lives and possibly win the war." Seton laughed harshly. " Soma idiot said the first seven years of the war would be the worst. If they don't do something of this kind, it will be the first sovoutrea
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