The two wars of the last three years have overthrown a great many traditions, suppositions, and theories regarding various branches of military service, both in the navy and the army; and a new collection of facts now stands in their stead. The American army has been hampered by the uncertainty of the theory, while the army of the British Empire has been bound to the traditions of past centuries to such a degree as to cost immeasurably the lives of thousands of her bravest men, and to cause a series of useless disasters and defeats, nearly all of which can be laid almost directly to incompetent officers of the sort that carry canes on active service and have tea served by body-servants every afternoon.
[Illustration: Major-General J. R. Brooke, United States Army.]
An Australian war correspondent, Mr. Hales, has recently given his opinion of the British army in the London _Daily News_. He says: “I don’t suppose Australia will ever ask another Englishman to train her volunteers. If there was one British institution your colonial believed in more than another it was the British army. Their belief in the British army is shattered. The idol is broken.” He describes the officers as men “with their eye-glasses, their lisps, their hee-haw manners, their cigarettes, their drawling speech, their offensive arrogance, their astonishing ignorance, their supercilious condescensions, their worship of dress, their love of luxury, their appalling incompetence.
“Many a soldier I’ve asked why he scuttled. ‘Tommy, lad, why did you run, or why did you throw up your hands?’ I’d say.
“‘What’s the use of being killed?’ he’d answer. ‘’E don’t know where ’e are,’ meaning his officer. ‘I’d go anywheres if I’d a man to show me the way.’
“I believe if Kitchener had been chief in command he’d have shot some of those officers who surrendered. If the army is to be reformed it is with this class of young man they will have to start. Let him understand that soldiering is hard, stern business, and not play. The average officer hasn’t a mind above golf or cricket. He knows nothing of drill. He can’t ride. The mounted infantry is a farce. A Boer’s horse is a part of him. If there is a body of them, and you watch them through a glass, each man is off, has taken cover and led his horse away before you can say ‘knife.’ But watch a body of British. They have to wait for orders before they dismount; cover has to be pointed out to them; they have no initiative. Napoleon got his officers from the ranks. Who would make such a good officer as a sergeant-major? Instead of glory when they come home--glory and guzzling--some of the officers should get three years--you know where.”