As the door shut, the colonel, with a subdued twinkle in his eye, remarked—"Useful man that, eh?"
_The_ General Staff is improving. Red Tape is being killed; common-sense is beginning to triumph. It took exactly two hundred and fifty years for our General Staff to realise that soldiers cannot be expected to skirmish in busbies, or entrench a position in crimson tunics and skin-tight trews. This admission, you will agree, is evidence of awakening, so the British public need not be alarmed. Years ago, generals received their rank through the influence of their wives, or somebody else’s wife. Now, a general is expected to have the brains of Wellington and the sauce of the Kaiser. He is promoted for his efficiency, not for his glass eye or double-barrelled name. Indeed, it is only a brave man who would be a general, for he is supposed to know everything, from the weight of a soldier’s socks to the number of men that can be killed by a shrapnel shell. And he is the generator of all schemes for the training of His Majesty’s men. When the G.O.C. speaks, all are expected to show that they have a wholesome fear and awe of this almighty personage. The correct reply to a general, on all occasions, is "Yes, sir." Woe unto the man who would dispute the theories of the G.O.C., for "Death or such less punishment" lies in the hollow of his hand. A general who is keen of C.B.’s, knighthoods, and a baton, is always careful in the selection of his Staff. Up till fifteen years ago the young bloods of Mayfair were chosen because of their lineage, cash, and ability to ride a hunter at a five-barred gate. Now, a general seeks for an aide who can work twenty-three hours out of twenty-four, and possessed of all the knowledge that the Staff College can bestow. It is pleasant to note that many clever aspirants can be found, and that is the reason for the success of our arms to-day. If Wellington had had men of this type, he, like Hannibal and Napoleon, might also have conquered the Alps. But Wellington had to deal with aides who were simply British gentlemen with a passion for fox-hunting and a primitive thirst for blood. The modern Staff officer can secure the maximum of efficiency with the minimum of friction. He can inspire the training of a thousand muddling amateurs, and in six months can procure veterans of the type that conquered at Waterloo. Nothing is too much for him. He can make transports out of mud barges; bridges from milk carts; impregnable redoubts from biscuit-boxes, rubble, mud, and sand. In the midst of a most crushing reverse, he will collar a thousand retreating men, stick them in hen-houses, mills, and churchyards, and thus delay the advance of several army corps. He is tireless, persistent, sometimes dogmatic, but ever tactful and cheerful. Haking has instilled into him that soldiers are mainly human, and, in certain instances, fools, hence his ever cheerful charm, his pertinacity and human understanding. Of course there are a few of the old Peninsular type still left on the Staff. When you find them, Heaven help you! Their skulls are as shallow as the aborigines, and their tongues as cutting as a circular saw. They swear by The King’s Regulations, and meet every problem by a precise reference to para so-and-so, section something, of the supplement to His Majesty’s manuals of military muddles and laws. They terrify the simpleton by the fierceness of their dogmas, and ruthlessly crush the intellectual by thundering adjectives and cries of—insubordination and arrest. Thoroughly honest, thoroughly patriotic, but equally incompetent. They are tolerated for the simple reason that a shell or the age limit will eventually pass them out.