WAR OFFICE RESPONSIBILITY.
[To THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR"]
SIR,---" X. X. X.'s " touching confidence (Spectator, Sep. tember 22nd) that an efficient Army would follow upon the adoption of certain schemes of War Office reform is, I think, hardly justified. There are already orders, excellent in them- selves, that it is seemingly beyond the power of any general to get carried out properly. How often, for instance, has the complaint been made that officers commanding battalions treated rifle practice as so much fatigue duty, to be got over as soon as possible ? The truth is, the British officer is just what his countumen (the public Press included) insist that he shall be. How often, again, have we heard and read sneers about "theory," " mancenvres and tactics made in Germany," and ex- hortationa to those responsible to brush such pedantries aside, andtrust tothe " good-all-round-sportsman-and-man-at-games- accustomed-to-act-instead-of-thinking " to outgeneral the enemy while the latter was pondering ? Again, it is worth asking —How many young men enter the Service with any idea of making it a profession? An easy career, with no distressing strain on the intellect, no work after lunch, and brilliant rewards for a few minutes' fortunate opportunity, is, I fancy, more the aspect in which it presents itself. That an extra couple of shillings a day would secure a different type is a blindness to the obvious worthy only of a military expert. And in how many regiments is a subaltern who wishes to increase his military knowledge (beyond the daily sacrifice to the fetish "smartness ") safe from repression, to his loss socially and professionally ? I do not refer to certain cavalry regiments where the life of a subaltern not rich enough to be acceptable to the mess is intolerable—a mess that in a recrudescence of the instincts of whole- sale trade measures a gentleman by his ability to spend money—although there are scandals enough there =con- demned by War Office, the public, or the Press, saving one unpopular weekly journal. Indeed, so sacred is the character of some cavalry subalterns, that Parliament itself was incom- netent to drag from a reluctant Minister the name of the author of perhaps the worst, as also the silliest, disaster of the present war. We have the officers we insisted upon having; if they have been too often the hunted instead of the hunter, the sheep instead of the shepherd, it is, of course, the fault of &oath Africa; but the country cannot be made for them, and the country has never favoured them in turn as an impartial country might have done. The country, too, can- not be blamed for some surrenders of bodies of men with less loss than any British troops ever surrendered with before. Let us blame ourselves, who have demanded sportsmen and not soldiers, and not suppose that a mere reshuffling of offices will bring all things right. —I am, Sir, &c., Annum COKE.
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