Photo by Bassano Ltd.
BRIG-GENERAL E. G. WACE
(Controller of Labour)
CHAPTER XII.
G.H.Q. AND THE "NEW ARMY."
What G.H.Q. thought of the "Temporaries"—Old prejudices and their reason—The material of the "New Armies"—Some "New Army" Officers who did not play the game—The Regular Army Trade Union accepts its "dilutees."
What did G.H.Q., whose view may be taken as the authoritative one, think in 1918 of what used to be known as "the New Army?" G.H.Q. in 1918 represented in the main the pick of the old Regular Army. Nearly all its senior officers were "Regulars." The majority of the junior officers were "Temporaries." What was the feeling between them after the mutual knowledge that the years had brought?
Often I talked this over at dinner, sometimes with men whose opinions I had known in 1914 and 1915. There was H——, for instance, who, in those early years of the war, was an unsparing critic of the "New Army" which was, he used to say then, slovenly and a makeshift sort of show and could not salute properly, and suffered, and always would suffer, from the "non-military mind."
The non-military mind, according to him, was an affliction which was born in one, like original sin, and could only be exorcised by going to a Military Academy and becoming a Regular Soldier. I used to be very meek and long-suffering with him (he was senior to me) and only occasionally mentioned people like Blake (a civilian whom Cromwell made a General, and afterwards an Admiral, and a right good General and a right better Admiral he was) or non-militarily-minded men like Botha and Smuts.