Character and Command
Eighty per cent. of the rank and file are good fellows, glad to do their best if treated with consideration, humanity, and a little love. They are all very human, and you cannot prevent them from thinking in a human way. What they expect and desire is a strong command that lays down a just and reasonable order of things, and carries them through without confusion and change. To supply such command is often difficult—for, again, it is human nature that has to be dealt with.
Perhaps thirty per cent. of young officers are in part ignorant or forgetful of their trust and its bearing on good or bad organisation. They are sometimes inclined to imagine themselves set on a pedestal above the rank and file, spending more thought than should be on rivalling one another for rank, and stylishness, and a well-catered mess, while their men go forgotten, and left to look after themselves.
One may truly say that one does not always find strong men in large majorities down the list of young officers of a battalion—men who have a prolonged determination and ambition to endure the hard fight for a complete, wholesome, and wholly dangerous and united force. Here and there one may pick out the strong men, who never lose their military interest and who will brave anything, and then look at the remaining line which clearly shows, in the chain which is to bind the whole of a battalion, some weakness of strength, and the full extent of our failing.
It is a chain of some usefulness, thank God, but not capable, with its weaknesses, of everlasting service, nor as strong as it might be if time and material had allowed of a faultless welding.
By nature it is impossible to find all men of equal resolution, but at the same time we of some means and education are often a thoughtless people inclined to travel the line of least resistance in a difficult, self-seeking world. And that is where, in part, the fault springs from—the country from which we draw our stock has falteringly halted or fallen back in producing men of refinement and chivalry, and has encouraged in its stead a temperament of peculiar self-set vanity.
In a strong commander, a man who is loved by his men, you will always find there is refinement and generosity and bravery, and little selfish vanity—whether he be gentle-born or not. And look on the men who play the clean, straight game in any field of life, and one cannot fail to see that they are loved of all true-minded humanity. It is, they know, the only game to play, the only game that wins a mighty battle.
Leadership
The control of an ordered parade is a simple thing, and for the drill sergeant. But do not let us confuse the drill and discipline of the barrack square, which is something of an ornament and impressive, with the state of mind and aspect of a vital battle.
Gifted leadership is that which takes hold of and controls disorder—not order. No matter what we have read and have preached about discipline, the eternal fact which human nature will put before you on the awesome field is that we are of many tempers, that all has not been calculated or understood, and that Fate or Circumstance has, in part, destroyed the plan so carefully arranged before setting out.