CHAPTER XIV.
EDUCATING THE ARMY.
The beginning of an interesting movement—The work of a few enthusiasts—The unexpected peace—Humours of lectures to the Army—Books for the Army—The Army Printery.
In the last phase of the war G.H.Q. saw a remarkable new development in Army organisation: the inclusion of civic education as part of the soldier's Army course. Before this war, of course, there had been Army schoolmasters, and these in peace time did valuable work in teaching illiterate soldiers. Cobbett, we know, owed his education to the Army; so did one of the famous Generals of this war, Sir William Robertson; and once we had as a visitor and lecturer at G.H.Q. an American University Professor whose first education had been won as a ranker in the British Army.
But the new Education Scheme had a much wider scope than the old Army schools. The plan in brief was to make civic education a definite and compulsory part of Army life, so that every man joining the Army should have a course of humane and technical or professional education. The plan is now in course of being carried on to successful fruition, and in the future the Army will be a Continuation School as well as a defence service.
This may prove to be one of the most useful results of the war. It was due to the enthusiasm of a little band of soldiers and civilians, the leaders of which were Colonel Borden Turner, Major-General Bonham-Carter, Colonel Lord Gorell and Sir Henry Hadow.
The Army Educational movement had a small beginning with the organisation of lectures. After the fighting of 1917 it was felt that something more than the usual round of cinema shows and the performances of Divisional theatrical troupes was necessary to help to recreate the fighting value of the Army, and that what was required was something more solid and intellectual, something that would raise an interest in civic subjects quite apart from the war. It was therefore decided to get as many scholars as possible to come out and give lectures to the men. During the previous winter the Y.M.C.A. had arranged for a few lecturers to come out and lecture in back areas, and they had machinery already existing for looking after them in France. The Y.M.C.A. now again undertook the work of housing, feeding, and transporting the lecturers in France, and for all arrangements for getting them to the country. Major-General Bonham-Carter persuaded some of the Government offices, viz., Reconstruction, Food Control, Pensions, Labour, Education, to send out men who could help the movement; and Lieutenant-Colonel (then Captain) Borden Turner came to G.H.Q. to supervise the details. All arrangements for lectures were made by the General Staff with the Y.M.C.A. Lecturers were sent to units in the fighting areas rather than to the Lines of Communication.
MAJOR-GENERAL C. BONHAM CARTER
Later on it was decided that we must have an organisation to carry out a big scheme of general education directly an armistice was declared, so that the time of the men might be profitably employed while waiting for demobilisation after the fighting was over. This decision was made in December, 1917. Major-General Bonham-Carter and Captain Borden Turner worked out a scheme with this idea, and Sir Henry Hadow, an educationalist of great renown, gave his assistance.
Already efforts in this direction had been made in England and in the Canadian Corps and elsewhere by individuals, to provide facilities for education and hold classes, and a few voluntary classes were being held by the Y.M.C.A. There was, however, no organised effort anywhere except in the Canadian Corps.
In January, 1918, it was decided to get the scheme started as early as possible and not wait for the Armistice. But at that time there was a great shortage of men, and naturally any scheme which demanded new establishments met with objections. For this reason things moved slowly. However, a scheme was got ready, waiting for the favourable moment to arrive. It arrived sooner than was expected. At an historic dinner one night at Lord Haig's château his personal enthusiasm was aroused, and he gave orders for the preparation of a scheme for general education throughout the Army in France with the object (1) of making men better citizens of the Empire, by widening their outlook and knowledge, (2) of helping them by preparing them for their return to civil life.
Lord Haig approved of the scheme that had already been prepared, but it was put into force slowly, because very few men could be spared from fighting and Lines of Communication work to fill the establishments required. But a start was made. The scheme arranged for the work to be administered by General Staff officers and attached officers in all Formations, but on the Lines of Communication the Y.M.C.A. carried out all teaching work as agents of the General Staff.
In April, 1918, it was realised that the efforts in France would be greatly hampered if they were not co-ordinated with those in England and elsewhere. The War Office was therefore urged to undertake this co-ordinating work. Lord Gorell, who was at that time working under Major-General Bonham-Carter in the Training Branch at G.H.Q., was appointed to the War Office for the purpose.
The Army Education movement had warm sympathy from those at the head of affairs. The Commander-in-Chief when once it was put before him was enthusiastic. So was Lord Milner, then Secretary of State for War; and Sir Travers Clarke, Q.M.G. and Major-General Daunay (Staff Duties) gave it every support. But it was a movement from below rather than from above, a movement springing from a widely-spread feeling amongst the soldiers that they should win some better outlook on life from their term in the Army.
If one man more than another should be singled out in this movement, which really sprang from spontaneous generation, it would be Borden Turner. He had the crusading spirit and preached Education to every authority until what was a vague aspiration came to be a concrete fact. Certainly Borden Turner was a scarcely tolerable friend to many of the already over-busy officers at G.H.Q. He was always urging them to give lectures, to take on classes. At this time there was practically no "Establishment," and the only hope was to get officers to give spare time to educational work. They had no spare time, but at the remorseless urging of Borden Turner they stole hours from sleep or from the Ramparts and gave lectures or took classes.
Before the Armistice the Organisation of the Education Branch had progressed to some extent. Lord Gorell had gone to London and found a sympathetic leader in Major-General Lyndon Bell, the Director of Staff Duties, War Office, and S.D. 8 was established, having as its chief officers under Lord Gorell, Sir Henry Hadow, Colonel Sir Theo. Morrison, Major Basil Williams (the writer of a famous Life of Chatham), and Major Frank Fox. General Bonham-Carter and Lieutenant-Colonel Borden Turner remained in France, and the work of the new branch was being established and co-ordinated with that of the Y.M.C.A. and with the Canadian, Australian, and New Zealand Army Education schemes when the German unexpectedly threw in his hand. A feverish rush for demobilisation at once set in. As a consequence of newspaper agitation the original demobilisation plans were seriously upset, and one of the worst sufferers was the Army Education movement. Still an amount of useful work both on the humane and the technical side was effected. Best of all, the principle was firmly established that if a nation takes away a young citizen from civil life it owes it to him that when the time comes to send him back to civil life it will not be into a blind alley; his term in the army will be employed to make a sound citizen of him and to give him training in some vocation.
LIEUT-COLONEL D. BORDEN TURNER
The Army Education organisation set itself to search out teaching talent in the Army before calling in outside assistance, and it made some interesting finds. Many a University don was discovered in a very humble position. A gentleman described as "one of the most learned men in Europe" was a bombardier in a battery. N.C.O.s and rankers who were Fellows of famous colleges were common enough. Most of them were drawn into the Education organisation.
One of the officers taken by Education from G.H.Q., where he was a staff captain in the Adjutant General's Branch, was Captain Hansell, who had been the Prince of Wales' tutor in his student days. Hansell, in addition to his scholarship, is a sagacious urbane diplomat with a deep and sympathetic knowledge of French life. He would have been best placed on the Military Mission to the French Army. But that would have been a serious loss if it had taken him away from G.H.Q., where his after-dinner talk cheered the seniors and his artful unobtrusive tutelage helped the juniors. Captain Hansell took charge of the Lecturers' Headquarters for Education, and the task must have made a very heavy demand on his tact. Lecturers of all kinds were being sent out to France to address the troops, some of them with very vague notions of what was required of them in the way of kit. One lecturer vastly pleased his soldier audiences, but imposed a heavy strain on transport by always appearing on the platform in full evening dress. Another lecturer went out—in a Flanders winter—with a frock-coat as his warmest garment, "and it was the thinnest frock-coat in Christendom," observed a sympathiser. Of course a very great deal of "roughing it" was the lot of the lecturer going from unit to unit to troops living under active service conditions.
Moreover organisation was not perfect at the time. At one period a steady stream of lecturers was arriving at Lecturers' Headquarters but none was going out to lecture, because all transport for the time was absorbed in a particularly heavy phase of demobilisation. The lecturers, on whose damask periods idleness was as a cankering worm in the bud, got into a sad state of impatience and were threatening to lecture one another, or do something else desperate, when the position was saved by a timely visit to them of the Prince of Wales and his brother, Prince Albert, who had tea with them, chatted over their work, and convinced them that they were not out on a fool's errand. Shortly afterwards the transport situation was relieved, and the lecturers rushed to their audiences and peace reigned again. But it is dreadful to think of what might have happened if there had not been the urbane and diplomatic Captain Hansell smoothing over troubles. A mutiny of lecturers would have afforded some puzzling problems to the Provost-Marshal.
CAPTAIN H. P. HANSELL
Before the Army Education organisation was born a great number of men in the Army did some good solid reading. The Camps Libraries organisation in England sent out to every unit parcels of books. Most of these were of the opiate class, light magazines and light stories intended to bemuse and not to educate the mind. But a proportion of good books slipped in and were warmly appreciated by some.
The Army itself had a very fecund printing press, but it was devoted almost solely to the production of books of orders and regulations and text books. Regimental annuals of a humorous kind existed but were not encouraged. As a rule they were printed in England, not in France, and the conditions of censorship—more perhaps than the taste of writers and readers—confined them as a rule to somewhat feeble japes.
There were very often mooted proposals for a G.H.Q. Monthly. It might have drawn on a very distinguished band of writers. But authority contrived that these proposals should never come to maturity. The expenditure of time and material was grudged, and G.H.Q. was naturally very nervous on points of "Intelligence." There are a thousand and one ways in which military secrets can be given away with quite harmless intent. An Intelligence General's aphorism on this point ran: "We find out far more from the stupidity of our enemies than from the cleverness of our spies."
It is clear that silence is the one sound policy. If a man says nothing, nothing can be discovered from him. If he will speak, even if it is only with the intention of deceiving, he may disclose something. British diplomacy abroad (which was not such a foolish show as some critics say, or else how comes it that the British Empire, from the tiny foundation of these islands, has come to its present greatness?) was always the despair of the inquisitive Foreign Correspondent, for it never said anything. An Embassy or Ministry which would tell a lie, especially an elaborate lie, was far preferable, for from something you may deduce something; from nothing, nothing. G.H.Q. acted with a sound discretion in smothering all proposals for a G.H.Q. Monthly.
The Army did most of its own printing, of maps, orders, forms, and training books. Maps were done by the R.E. mapping section, other printing by the Army Printing and Stationery Services under Colonel Partridge. This was a highly efficient department with printing presses of the most modern type at Boulogne, Abbéville, and elsewhere. A.P. and S.S. printed daily General Routine Orders and, as occasion demanded, poured out in millions Army Forms, posters, pamphlets, and books. Both the French and Americans used its services. It could print in Chinese and Arabic as well as in European characters, and some of its achievements in the way of quick and good printing would do credit to a big London printing house.
The Boulogne Printing Press, which was under the care of Major Bourne, was a particularly up-to-date establishment much praised by the Americans and the French as well as by our own Army. It put a strain once, however, on the politeness of the French. The French Mission at G.H.Q. wanted a book printed giving a record of its organisation. A.P. and S.S., in the right spirit, did its best to make the book a handsome one, and designed a special cover with fleur-de-lys decorations. The French Mission, with tact but with firmness, pointed out that France was now a Republic and a monarchical symbol could hardly be permitted on an official publication. It might give rise to a suspicion that the Army contemplated a coup d'état. The printers regretted and tried again. The second cover design bore the good old Roman Republican device of the lictors' fasces. But they were shown reversed. The French were desolated at being so exiguous, but could something else be tried, just plain type? The printers were determined, however, to give the good French something to show what an artistic people we English really are, and made a third effort at a decorated cover. This showed a really charming design in which the Gallic Cock strutted triumphantly along a rose-point border. The French were enchanted, so enchanted that they found reason to have another book, an annexe to the original book, printed with the same cover.
American Army publications were normally somewhat more solemn and staid than our own. Occasionally, however, the American humour broke out, as in the gas warning leaflet, which had not, perhaps, the sanction of American G.H.Q. but was widely (and usefully) circulated in the trenches. It began:—
In a Gas Attack
There are only Two Crowds
The Quick and the Dead
Be Quick and get that Gas Mask on!
After the Armistice, the Printing Services, no longer so much pressed with other Army work, were able to undertake some purely educational printing. But by this time demobilisation was sweeping away the classes, and the best of the opportunity had passed.