THE CHIEF LESSON OF THE WAR.
WE have not much sympathy with people who twitch the driver's elbow or clutch at the reins, even when he is doing something foolish, and when the man on the knifeboard is in theory in the right. It is generally best to let the man who has begun worry through to the end, even if he has started badly and has proved himself an indifferent whip. A sudden change is often more dangerous than a bad system. But while, for this reason, we mean to keep our strategy to ourselves, there is one lesson of the war which can be insisted on without in any way adding to the babble of voices from the knife- board and the side of the road which is now half deafening the generals and the Government. The lesson is that the public cannot afford to leave its Army to the experts on the one side and Parliament on the other,- i.e., give general instructions to Parliament to be liberal in reason, and then wash its hands of the business with the comfortable and yet modest belief : We don't under- stand these things, but presumably the soldiers do, and therefore it is safe to leave it to them.' It is not safe to do anything of the kind. We all know this in private life. No matter how much a matter is theoretically one for experts, like the drains, or the building of a house, or the putting up of electric light, the householder—i.e., the man who pays—if he leaves the thing entirely in the bands of the experts, and does not interest or exert himself in the matter, will find that the work has been badly done. Of course it will be equally badly done, in another way, if the householder muddles into all the minutia, and inter- feres with purely technical details ; but between such inter- ference and washing his hands of everything except saying that the business must not cost more than so much there is a world of difference. The man who wants things well done does not try to become an expert on every subject, nor does he fling himself blindly on the mercy of the expert at a fixed price. He trusts the expert wisely but not too well, and makes a shrewd choice between conflicting ex- perts,—for experts, unfortunately, do not all say the same thing, and there is thus plenty of room for the use of plain and unscientific common-sense. The jury knows no law and could not do the detective work necessary to col- lect the evidence in a murder case, but when the evidence has been given and the arguments set forth it can give a sound verdict. But, as we have said, the British public, with a mixture of carelessness and modesty, has assumed that it is incapable of looking after the Army, and has decided to leave the thing to the experts it has chosen- i.e., the soldiers at the top—tempered by a fixed sum, liberal enough, no doubt, but not to be exceeded under any circumstances whatever.
Hence, when members of the public who had taken the trouble to look closely into the matter protested against this fatal course of mental sluggishness plus a blind trust in a particular set of experts, they met with a very cold response. They were not actually snubbed or told to mind their own business, indeed, they even made people uncomfortable for a few days, but the general feeling was one of helpless acquiescence. It sounds as if things were not quite right ; but after all what can we do but trust the people whose proper business it is to manage these things ?' Exactly so,' says Jones, who has got a good hereditary business which he has not taken the trouble to master, when he is told that the management in this or that department is old-fashioned and ineffective. 'The accountants tell me that those departments cost me 30 per cent, more than they did ten years ago, and I have got very good and respectable men at the head of each, and though I don't encourage any waste, I tell them not to let things be ruined for a lick of paint ; what more can I do ? ' Let us drop meta- phors and look at the experience of the present war. During the last few years there have been two main streams of criticism directed against our military organi- sation, represented respectively by the writings of Mr. Spenser Wilkinson and Mr. Arnold-Forster. Their criticisms have overlapped, or rather, converged, on many points, and they have been ably supported by men both inside and outside the services, but to them especi- ally belongs the melancholy credit of having led the two choruses of warning. Mr. Spenser Wilkinson's special point has had to do with the brain of the Army. He has - told us again and again that in an Empire like ours mili- tary preparations and policy must go hand in hand, and that you cannot possibly get good results, and may get very evil results, unless you know clearly what you want, and having ascertained that, prepare carefully and intelligently for the purpose in view. In effect he has said : —' If you want to give really good parties you must not say to the cook : "Get in plenty of things of all kinds in case I want to entertain. It may be breakfast, or lunch, or tea, or dinner, I can't say which, and I don't know how many people there will be, but get enough things ready to do me well whatever it is."' Now every housekeeper knows that you may feed, but you will never get a good dinner or lunch under such conditions, To be well supplied you must say definitely : I shall want dinner got ready for eight or ten, and I should like soup, fish, entree, joint, game, pudding, and savoury.' When such an order is given, the cook can set herself to the work of prepara- tion, and can provide what is necessary. She has a definite object in view, and the dinner is ready even if the guests never come. In the same way, in national affairs, in order to give definite instructions our Government must look ahead and know their own minds. They must not say : Get together plenty of good material, and we will see later whether we want tea or dinner.' They must, that is, have a real policy, and not a mere general desire to do the best they can for the Empire. This fact Mr. Spenser Wilkinson has preached most clearly and persistently, and though personally we do not agree with the details of his special policy, we have never doubted the wisdom of his main proposition. In order to give our soldiers at headquarters a fair chance they must know what will be the sort of calls that will be made upon them. Of course, in some respects our War Office does know what they are wanted to do, as, for example, the garrison- ing of India, and that work is excellently done, but as a general rule they are left in the dark, for the very good reason that our politicians are in the dark themselves. They do not look the general situation full in the face and say : We shall certainly not fight here, and we shall certainly fight on this point,' but only conclude vaguely that they will fight if British interests are seriously menaced, but not unless. How different would have been the result if they had said:—' We shall be obliged to fight if the Dutch insist upon maintaining their racial ascendency in the Trans- vaal, and that struggle, if it comes, cannot belong delayed. Therefore, the work of preparing to beat the Boers must be entered upon most seriously and completely.' It was thus in no small measure because the public would not heed when they were told that they were drifting, and that drifting cannot by any possibility be made the basis for sound military preparations, that we have been placed in our present discreditable position.
Mr. Arnold-Forster's criticisms have been more detailed, but they have proved not one whit less true or important. He has again and again warned the public of almost all the defects in our system that have now become apparent. He told us especially that we were not paying proper attention to our artillery and to our cavalry, and that we had not got enough of either. Echoing him (as we most fully admit) we put it to the public nearly three years ago that we were the richest country in the world, and so ought to have the best and most numerous artillery in the world, whereas we had a less proportion of guns to men than any army in the world, and those we had, though good, not the best in the world. We have seen bow true was Mr. Arnold-Forster's criticism. We are quite aware that a good deal of the groaning about our artillery is overdone, and that the complaint that• it is outranged is due rather to the habit of firing shrapnel instead of common shell than to any real shortness of range. Again, we fully realise that the special corre. spondent is apt to compare a British field piece to a Boer gun of position. Still, making allowance for all this, we say without hesitation that the war has in effect fully justified Mr. Arnold-Forster's remarks on our artillery. It is the same in regard to his criticisms of our lack of cavalry, both men and horses, and also as regards plenty of items concerning the infantry. There will be time, however, to go into all these matters in detail later. All we want to insist on now is that on their main points Mr. Spenser Wilkinson and Mr. Arnold-Forster warned the nation well and truly, and that we have run, and are still running, great risks because in our sluggish. dull, careless way we did nothing, but only said : 'What they say seems common-sense, but after all we can only leave it to the experts.' Now in future the public must cease leaving things solely to the experts. That is the chief lesson of the war. We (the public) cannot do much now but volunteer, subscribe, and determine that we will see this thing through, even if we have to spend £200,000,000 on it and lose twenty thousand men. When, however, the war is over, the public must interest itself in the Army, not merely from the senti- mental point of view, but from that of sound business. The public pay, and the public must see that they get value for their money, and not leave the thing entirely to the official soldiers. When we say "the public" we mean, of course, the kind of people who busy themselves directly with civil affairs,—the intelligent, level-headed, and vigilant portion of the public. On military matters such men have hitherto kept silent, and have not even looked into the facts. In future there must be no such false modesty. The best elements in our civil life must not leave the Army alone, but must see that common-sense and sound business principles, and not official bugbears, rule at the War Office. When the Civil War in America began, Mr. Lincoln modestly thought that military affairs were entirely out of his sphere, and that the military experts must be given an absolutely free hand. They got a free hand and the most loyal and lavish support, with the result that all the world knows. Then Mr. Lincoln the civilian, greatly daring, went into things himself and straightened them out. The British public must in spirit copy him. They must not be afraid of insisting that two and two make four, and that common-sense is common at the War Office as well as in other places. No one, of course, wants civilians to worry soldiers in the field or to overdo their interference, but the public must be vigilant in the future, and ready to throw its weight on the side of reason and good sense in military affairs.
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