Joffre and His Army

by Charles Dawbarn

General Joffre's distinction happily expresses the fundamental character of the two systems; it goes to the root of army psychology. The French method requires a knowledge of the temperament of the men; for, though you may drive the dull and high-spirited in much the same way, provided you are brutal enough, to lead successfully requires knowledge of mental characteristics and a certain power of appeal which elicits the best efforts in your men. French officers, therefore, have to be psychologists, understanding the character of those they lead and the subtle differences that divide the townsman from the peasant. They must vary indefinably the address when they talk to one or the other. These two broad classes are moved by different springs of action, and the commander has to find out the best way of firing the lethargic and attracting the fiery nature.

A French friend, who commanded a battalion of engineers, gave me some explanation of the methods he employed in dealing with a difficult class, the town-bred mechanic. His battalion was composed of men from provincial centres, with a sprinkling of skilled workmen from Paris. He played off one against the other. When the Parisian was inclined to show slackness or insubordination he remonstrated with him in a tone of raillery and mock commiseration. It was certainly regrettable that he could not attain to the same level of conduct or efficiency as those excellent fellows from the provinces, who, after all, had not enjoyed the same advantages. Rarely had he to speak twice to the same delinquent; the man's amour propre was aroused; from that moment, he commenced to mend his ways. To the provincial he said that he was surprised that a man of his energy and parts should allow himself to take second place to the Parisian. Then it was true that the countryman could not hold his own with workers from the capital? This, again, proved admirably adapted to the particular mentality of his hearer; his pride was piqued; he gave no more trouble. Thus, to command under the French system requires considerable adroitness and intelligence.

The secret, my friend said, of keeping order and discipline in a regiment without getting oneself disliked was to refrain from exerting more authority than was strictly necessary. One must not be always on the look-out for faults. Officers made a mistake in seeing everything at all times; there are moments when, as Nelson found, the blind eye was convenient. A Frenchman is not naturally inclined towards discipline; the quicker his intelligence, the more likely he is to feel resentment at clumsy authority. The peasant, slower to think and to take offence, is more amenable. He gives up his will and individuality with greater readiness to the leader, and even courts direction. But in the veins of every Frenchman is some trace of the frondeur and revolutionary. His mind is impatient of restraint and leaps readily to conclusions and, sometimes, to tragic resolutions. Mere authority, as authority, chafes him; he dislikes it in the abstract. To render it acceptable, there must be an idea behind it. If you want to lead him, you must be prepared to undertake gladly the same risks as he, to go out and meet them with a gay insouciance. You must show him that you do not count your life more valuable than his, or shelter yourself behind your position. You must lead him by going in front, not by driving him from behind. It is an age of miracles; astounding things may happen; notwithstanding his nonchalance and objection to play the hero, at the moment of action he becomes transformed. You have only to know how to draw him out, to find the formula which unlocks his heart, to discover the hidden springs of his emotion. For an idea, it has been said, he is ever ready to shoulder a rifle behind a barricade. And when that idea is the country, with patriotism leaping high, his frondeur spirit is capable of all. Centuries have not dimmed its ardent inflammability, and each successive phase in history renews his high susceptibility, until one feels that the Great War, instead of exhausting the fruitful soil of France, has enriched it with new virtues and a new potentiality. Rifles have spoken again from the barricades, but this time the nation is ranged on one side of it and the invader on the other. Patriotism and ideality flow perennially from the mountains of Latin youth, ready to be diverted to any holy cause.

The spirit is manifest even in the midst of the battle. At the critical moment, when officers have fallen in the hurricane of iron, a man emerges from the ranks to lead on his comrades to the attack. From his knapsack, the legendary baton has slipped into his strong, tenacious hand. He has shown qualities of leadership in the supreme hour. General Sir Robert Baden-Powell recognised this genius of the race for instant adaptation when he visited the French Front and heard stories of improvisation; the native initiative of the soldier comes ever to his aid in the tightest corners, where German mechanism inevitably fails. Years ago, De Vigny, in a celebrated phrase, proclaimed the inherent power of a Frenchman to become a man of war. Time and again he has proved his martial qualities—a sheer instance of atavism. A sergeant leads a battalion into the jaws of death with such fire and courage that each man is electrified, loses his constitutional timidity and becomes a lion in the fight. Under this magic influence he is irresistible, like Cromwell's Ironsides, whom, strange to say, he physically resembles. The low steel bonnet crowns the same sort of ruddy visage and brown beard which marked the East Anglian in the seventeenth century. There is something of the Englishman in him, something of the Berserker employing his "irresistible fury" in a national cause. His spirit of adventure has been translated into terms of patriotic achievement.

And the officers themselves know how to acquire rapidly the science of the trench. Many in the regular army fell in the early days of the war; the professional leader trained and set apart for the career scarcely existed any more. Then up sprang the officer of reserve, until then engaged in civilian pursuits; nine-tenths were in that condition. But, taught in the hard school of war, they developed into the most accomplished chiefs.

Though the French pioupiou is readily accessible to daring, and glories in a passionate achievement, he is not hypnotised by names, but demands a real aristocracy. It is an error to suppose that he resents superiority. On the contrary, he is constantly looking for it and is eager to recognise it when found. He is equally impressed by it, whether he finds it in the plain, plebeian features of Dupont or in the aristocratic mien of a De Rochefoucauld. The name matters nothing; the qualities are everything. But if he disregards family, he is insistent on a real distinction. Dupont must not shelter his mediocrity under democracy, or can the patrician hope to win devotion by a mere show of elegance. The accent is not of much account in the trenches; there, as elsewhere, must be a real superiority. If it is wanting, if the officer is mediocre and vulgar in his taste and habits, shows the same deficiencies and the same lack of control as the lower ranks, then his supremacy will be short-lived, whatever his grade. And it does happen that old soldiers, promoted from the ranks, sometimes fail to inspire the respect that should be theirs, because they cling to the old habits, the old laisser-aller, and know not how to assume the new virtues that should go with the new position. For commissioned rank in the French as in the other armies of the world must mark a real ascendancy, moral, mental, and even physical, to be effective in the best sense. It is part of the panoply of power.

None the less, the adaptability of the nation is never better shown than in the speed with which the officer, newly risen from the ranks, for bravery and coolness on the field, puts on the whole armour of leadership. Yet his speech, probably, will remain homely, and he will adopt no airs which jar with his humble origin and native simplicity. Perhaps the least successful of these leaders are those who have longest served in some capacity, such as adjudant (a rank above sergeant), because they are rooted fast in their old associations and have not those natural qualities of authority which should be inseparable from commissioned rank. The essential is that a man shall show the temper of a chief, and for this reason the sportsman often proves more successful in handling his men than the more intellectual type of soldier, who is better able, no doubt, to perceive the purpose of a movement. Yet the rank and file will certainly expect high attainments from their ultimate leaders, and are intelligent enough to know that no amount of practical experience is a real substitute for sound military culture. Obviously, a knowledge of military history and of the principles of strategy are not required of the subaltern who leads an attack on a village; but it is equally true that only to the student are accessible those solutions of the past which are of such importance in understanding the present. The sportsman, then, rather than the office soldier, inspires the affection of his men. The type is more often found, no doubt, amongst the aristocracy and the higher bourgeoisie than amongst the artisan class, for in France at least the last-named has rarely the chance of playing games and of acquiring dexterity in manly sports. Again, the men know that those who have risen from the ranks are harder to serve than the "gentleman" class, just as the works' foreman is a severer taskmaster than the employer; thus of all the officers the type that best succeeds in drawing out the qualities of his men is he who has had the broadest education and is the best example of finished manhood. The birth and social advantage are merely the make-weight, not the ground-work, for his command; the contrary is alien to the Republican instinct and would be resented. But if the men are touched with the feeling that Jack is as good as his master, they like that master to be a fine, upstanding fellow, recommending himself as much by his handsome physical appearance as by his urbanity and savoir-faire. If to this can be added a lively temperament, disdain of danger and an evident liking for bodily exercise, his dominion will be complete. But these things do not come from books, or are they handed down from generation to generation like a Roman nose or a Bourbon chin. And thus is exposed, no doubt, the weakness of the hereditary principle. Alas! man cannot transmit, like a letter in the post, his courage and adroitness to his descendants. Meeting cross currents by the way, the atavic message becomes hopelessly confused.

Yet the French system in its elasticity is admirably adapted to the genius of the race, for it gives free play to improvisation. No account is taken of social status, but I have shown that social rank, coupled with mental and moral attributes, do aid a man even in Republican France. Valour is no respecter of persons—the poor man may be as brave as the most favoured of the gods. Thus there is ever in the breast of the soldier the splendid hope that to-morrow he may begin his ascent to the temple of Fame. Cases of promotion are so numerous that they have ceased to be exceptional, and represented, at least during the Great War, half the number of commissioned officers. The garçon de bureau, earning his five francs a day at the Hôtel de Ville, is a lieutenant of reserve. In time of war he rejoins his regiment and becomes a captain. He is mentioned for bravery and is rewarded by the red ribbon of the Legion. No one finds it strange that this young man, son of a roadmaker in municipal employ, should be on the high road to honours whilst his father works on the low road of obscurity.

And the man—an amiable functionary of the Ville de Paris—from whom I had this instance of Republican grandeur and simplicity recalled his own military service and the adjudant studying to be an officer, who on wet days instructed young conscripts in the elementary lessons of the great battles. He remembers particularly his description of Fontenoy and his vivid presentation of the forces in contact and the different dispositions of the generals, which ended in our undoing and the victory of the French. The lecturer had kept the rugged speech of his class, but his obvious enthusiasm and knowledge of his subject found a quick road to the hearts and comprehension of his young hearers. That simple, rough fellow with a taste for study is a Brigadier-General to-day. The Great War gave him his chance to show his mettle. It is a common enough story in the French Army, particularly in the first eighteen months of the war, when the Great Retreat and several sharp offensives had inflicted immense loss on the corps of officers.

The material of the French Army, then, is pretty fine stuff, but it has to be treated with a delicate discrimination and with that peculiar French quality known as doigté. We have seen that town and country, side by side in the same unit, must be dealt with perspicaciously by the officer. Anything that looks like mere routine and a mere waste of time and energy is particularly obnoxious to the sharp fellow from the large centres of population. "A quoi bon tout ça?" he asks, with a scarcely concealed irritation. He is difficult to lead unless he comprehends the military utility of the order. Once his sympathetic intelligence has been gained, he puts his soul into the work. The peasant farmer, on the other hand, accepts everything with the stolid passivity of those who work upon the land. He does not suffer moral torture from the feeling that he is wasting his time. Is he not out in the open? And the food is good. His intelligence does not rebel against red tape, which is so distasteful to his lively contemporary from the town workshops. And so the commander has to show discretion in his manner of utilising the human material to his hand. The mechanic probably will prove an excellent scout and give a vivid account of the country through which he passes and the enemy whom he has sighted. His interest has been excited, and all his qualities of resourcefulness and ready adaptability come to the surface. He feels that he is being worthily employed, and is happy in the knowledge that he has been of service to his superior. But put him to guard a haystack and he is much less happy. That is a peasant's job, he feels. And the peasant, indeed, is perfectly at home in front of the hay; his nostrils dilate with pleasure at the sweet scent of it; it makes him think of his own bit of grass growing there in Brittany on one of those shining slopes where the gorse flames.