TOPICS OF THE DAY.
GENERAL BULLER AND HIS SUCCESSOR.
GENERAL BULLER has been relieved of the com- mand of the First Army Corps, and all who care for the efficiency of the Army will feel deeply grateful to Mr. Brodrick and Lord Roberts for their courage in per- forming a most painful task. As our readers know, we hold that General Buller should never have been appointed ; but having been appointed, it required no little courage and devotion to public duty for the military authorities, even after his speech, to reverse their decision and remove him from the command. Weaker men would have passed over the speech, and. have preferred to take no notice of it, rather than to seem to make an admission that their previous action was unwise. Instead, the Secretary of State and the Commander-in-Chief ran the risk of being accused of weakness and instability of purpose, and thought only of the great trust committed to them. Such action deserves, and we are sure will receive, the gratitude of the nation. Both men have increased the confidence of the public in their strength of purpose. What the nation desires above all things just now is to feel that the Army is controlled by those who will not shrink from any task, however disagreeable, if they consider that its welfare and efficiency will be thereby promoted. Recent events have shown that we possess such men in Mr. Brodrick and Lord Roberts.
Of Sir Redvers Buller we only desire to say that it is unjust, nay, ridiculous, to speak of him as having been rained and disgraced, or of his having been over- whelmed by unfair and malignant criticisms. Sir Redvers Buller was not a man fitted to command the First Army Corps ; but he remains what he always was— a brave soldier, devoted to the best of his abilities to his duty, and with a military record of which any man might be proud. To talk as if we were heaping contumely and disgrace on Sir Redvers Buller, and ignoring and blotting out his long and splendid public service in the past, merely because we cannot admit his fitness to command the First Army Corps, and because we hold' that his generalship in Natal did 'not show military capacity, is a most mis- chievous exaggeration. You do not censure an old and faithful servant because you do not think him fitted to hold a particular post in the household. We do not, however, propose to say anything more in regard to General Buller's capacity as a general, unless his friends should unhappily be injudicious enough to insist on going into the details of the military operations in Natal. We prefer to dwell upon those qualities which endeared General Buller to the men who served under him, both in the field and at home. Unquestionably General Buller was a very popular general with his men. And he gained his popularity by no unworthy arts, but by a real and evident devotion to their interests. No doubt the whole art of war does not consist in making the soldier comfortable, but a proper care and attention for his needs and desires is to be very greatly commended. But it would not be fair to give the impression that the private soldiers like General Buller merely because he fed them well, and saw that they were well treated. His splendid personal courage, his bluntness of speech, and his down- rightness, coupled with a hardness which was never unjust or malignant, were each and all causes of admiration. The men saw in him what they regarded as the ideal soldier, what they would like to be and what they would like others to think they were,—a big, burly bulldog of a man such as Scott has immortalised in Athelstan, the Anglo-Saxon warrior in "Ivanhoe." In fact, it would hardly be too much to say that General Buller has the qualities of the ideal non- commissioned officer raised to their highest terms. But the sergeant in apotheosis, though a splendid fellow, is not the man for high command. We may, nay, ought to, admire him, but we should put him to do appropriate work.. Unfortunately, the curse of the British Army during the last thirty years has been the habit of putting men who are fit for one piece of work to do, not it, but another for which they are not fitted. If General Buller has suffered from this habit, the fault is not his, hut those who have allowed the system to grow up. This the public will in the end realise, and when the excitement of the moment has died away they will recognise that though General Buller could not be retained at Aldershot, he remains a soldier of whose personal qualities and devoted service the nation has every. reason to be proud. What' is now necessary is that the incident should be regarded as closed, and that all controversy should cease. If the defenders of General Buller are wise they will take the' excellent advice given to them in an able and tem- perate article in the Westminster Gazette of Wednesday. Nothing but harm to General Buller himself, as also to the public interest, which we feel sure General Buller has a great deal more at heart than his own amour propre, can come from any attempt to show that' General Buller has been unjustly treated.
The appointment of General French to succeed General Buller as soon as he can be spared from South Africa is an excellent one. -Unless we are greatly mistaken, General French will prove an ideal trainer of soldiers and officers, and will be able to create at Aldershot a First Army Corps worthy of his military reputation in the field. He should endeavour to.use his experience to create a force which will be to our old Army what Cromwell's "New Model" was to the previous forces of the Commonwealth. No doubt he, or any General who tries to develop his command on lines of common-sense and to get out of the old ruts, will have tO fight the Official machine at the War Office, but we hope that General French will challenge the combat. If' he does we do not doubt that he will be supported by Mr. Brodrick-. The whole object, use, and aim of the army corps system is to produce six autonomous commands which shall be developed on independent though parallel lines by their commanders, and therefore if the scheme is to' succeed the General in command- of the First Arniy Corps must strike out a bold course, must have his own way at Aldershot, and must refuse to be dry-nursed either by the War Office or by the permanent Staff. In. our view, the' whole problem of War Office reform depends on the success of the army corps scheme. If that scheme can be made to succeed, we may get rid of the War Office as we now know. it,—may, in fact, cut down the upas tree. If the army' corps scheme fails, all hope of real War Office reform goes with it. If once we have five or six autonomous commands, we may virtually abolish the present War Office and give our Army organisation a new basis. The autonomous army corps would, as it were, be federated' for purposes of supply of all kinds just as the Co-opera- tive Societies are federated in a Wholesale Co-operative Society which furnishes them with what they need. But the constituent Societies have not to obtain leave for any petty act of retail administration. Federalisation for supply would not, of course, be the only nexus of the army corps. Above them all would be the Com- mander-in-Chief and his Staff (and above him the Secre- tary of State for War) who would hold all the army corps' under control as a General does the regiments in his command. The Commander-in-Chief would exercise not, less but more efficient control because the army corps , were autonomous. And in addition to his supremacy over the various army corps, he would have on his Staff three or four Generals whose business it would be to inspect and report on the condition of the army corps,—to see that they were kept in full efficiency and vigour, and to main- tain the highest standard. By means of such inspectors the Commander-in-Chief would be able to see that the work was not only ordered, but done. If a particular army corps commander complained that this or that. thing was impossible, the inspector would be able to point out that it was, -as a matter of fact, done as ordered in another command. The inspector would thus encourage that healthy competition which is the only sure antiseptic in human institutions. In a word, the army corps system if properly applied will get rid of the War Office in its present shape. A great deal of the work now done in Pall Mall will be localised in the six centres, and the residual organisation at the top will become. an organisa- tion for control and inspection, and also for thialAng out the objects for which the Army may have to be used, and, the means by which those objects can best be attained. d. The prime business of the Commander-in-Chief should be to deal with high military problems, and not, as now, to wrestle with the inanities which are the daily product of a huge administrative machine eager for power and work, and yet by its nature and organisation quite unfitted for its task. Let us make our army corps really and not merely nominally autonomous. Next let us federalise them for supply. Then let them be controlled, directed, inspected, and so kept up to the mark, by a very simple central organisation. Finally, let there be at headquarters a real brain of the Army—a thinking organisation which can look ahead and prepare for dangers to come—a body, for example, that can realise that infantry are not to be preferred for fighting a mounted enemy, which can caku- l atee the amount of ammunition required, and will not delay manufacturing at full speed till every magazine in the country is empty. The War Office now is a great, fat, unwieldy body. We want in its place a head with a brain in it.
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