At the outbreak of the South African War I met a young Englishman in London who was bubbling over with patriotic enthusiasm, and whose fixed idea was to go to the war, and to go quickly before it was over; but he told me that he had almost given up all hope of getting there, as he had exhausted every possible means of accomplishing his desire. He had been to the War Office to see every one, from Sir Evelyn Wood down; and although he was a relative of the Duke of Devonshire, and swung a great deal of influence, he could not make it; and yet he said that he “simply _must_ go.”
“If you really want to go so much, why do you not enlist?” I asked.
“What! go as a Tommy?” he exclaimed; “why, I could not do that.” And, as a matter of fact, he could not, since the feeling against such a course is so strong that even in time of war it would not be countenanced by his social judges. I saw him again in the later months of the war, and he had attained his desire by going to the Cape on his own responsibility and recruiting a troop of colonials, afterwards receiving a commission to command it.
There are instances where men of social standing have enlisted in the British army, but they are very rare in comparison with those of the same class who answered the President’s call to arms at the beginning of the war with Spain; men who joined not only the volunteer branches of the American army, but who enlisted in large number as privates in the regular service.
General Hector Macdonald is an interesting exception in the British system. He rose from the ranks, and is to-day one of the best officers of the generals’ staff, and is loved, feared, and respected by his men.
For these various reasons it is easy to see why the personnel of the rank and file of the American army is much higher than that of the British. This is conspicuously true in the matter of mental attainments. In our army it is rare to find a man who is not fairly well educated, while the majority of the men in the ranks are considerably enlightened. There is not one illiterate man in the whole enlisted force.
On the other hand, the British army is dismally low in its standard of literacy. In the official report published in 1899, the illiterateness of the recruits receives scathing comment; only forty-five in one thousand were fairly educated; eighteen per cent. were utterly illiterate.