It was really the army that chose Sir Douglas to be Commander-in-Chief. Whenever the possibility of the retirement of Sir John French was mentioned and you asked an officer who should take his place, the answer was always either Robertson or Haig. In any profession the members should be the best judges of excellence in that profession, and through eighteen months of organizing and fighting these two men had earned the universal praise of their comrades in arms. Robertson went to London and Haig remained in France. England looked to them for victory.
Birth was kind to Sir Douglas. He came of an old Scotch family with fine traditions. Oxford followed almost as a matter of course for him and afterward he went into the army. From that day there is something in common between his career and Sir William's, simple professional zeal and industry. They set out to master their chosen calling. Long before the public had ever heard of either one their ability was known to their fellow soldiers. No two officers were more averse to any form of public advertisement, which was contrary to their instincts no less than to the ethics of soldiering. In South Africa, which was the practical school where the commanders of the British Army of to-day first learned how to command, their efficient staff work singled them out as coming men. Both had vision. They studied the continental systems of war and when the great war came they had the records which were the undeniable recommendation that singled them out from their fellows. Sir John French and Sir Ian Hamilton belonged to the generation ahead of them, the difference being that between the '50s and the '60s.
It was the test of command of a corps and afterward of an army in Flanders and Northern France which made Sir Douglas Commander-in-Chief, a test of more than the academic ability which directs chessmen on the board: that of the physical capacity to endure the strain of month after month of campaigning, to keep a calm perspective, never to let the mastery of the force under you get out of hand and never to be burdened with any details except those which are vital.
The subordinate who went in an uncertain mood to see either Sir Douglas or Sir William left with a sense of stalwart conviction. Both had the gift of simplifying any situation, however complex. When a certain general became unstrung during the retreat from Mons, Sir Douglas seemed to consider that his first duty was to assist this man to recover composure, and he slipped his arm through the general's and walked him up and down until composure had returned. Again, on the retreat from Mons Sir Douglas said, "We must stay here for the present, if we all die for it," stating this military necessity as coolly as if it merely meant waiting another quarter-hour for the arrival of a guest to dinner.
No less than General Joffre, Sir Douglas lived by rule. He, too, insisted on sleeping well at night and rising fresh for his day's work. During the period of preparation for the offensive his routine began with a stroll in the garden before breakfast. Then the heads of the different branches of his staff in headquarters town came in turn to make their reports and receive instructions. At luncheon very likely he might not talk of war. A man of his education and experience does not lack topics to take his mind off his duties. Every day at half-past two he went for a ride and with him an escort of his own regiment of Lancers. The rest of the afternoon was given over to conferences with subordinates whom he had summoned. On Sunday morning he always went into headquarters town and in a small, temporary wooden chapel listened to a sermon from a Scotch dominie who did not spare its length in awe of the eminent member of his congregation. Otherwise, he left the chateau only when he went to see with his own eyes some section of the front or of the developing organization.
Of course, the room in the chateau which was his office was hung with maps as the offices of all the great leaders are, according to report. It seems the most obvious decoration. Whether it was the latest photograph from an aeroplane or the most recent diagram of plans of attack, it came to him if his subordinates thought it worth while. All rivers of information flowed to the little chateau. He and the Chief of Staff alone might be said to know all that was going on. Talking with him in the office, which had been the study of a French country gentleman, one gained an idea of the things which interested him; of the processes by which he was building up his organization. He was the clearing house of all ideas and through them he was setting the criterion of efficiency. He spoke of the cause for which he was fighting as if this were the great thing of all to him and to every man under him, but without allowing his feelings to interfere with his judgment of the enemy. His opponent was seen without illusion, as soldier sees soldier. To him his problem was not one of sentiment, but of military power. He dealt in blows; and blows alone could win the war.
Simplicity and directness of thought, decision and readiness to accept responsibility, seemed second nature to the man secluded in that little chateau, free from any confusion of detail, who had a task—the greatest ever fallen to the lot of a British commander—of making a raw army into a force which could undertake an offensive against frontal positions considered impregnable by many experts and occupied by the skilful German Army. He had, in common with Sir William Robertson, "a good deal of thinking to do"; and what better place could he have chosen than this retreat out of the sound of the guns, where through his subordinates he felt the pulse of the whole army day by day?
His favorite expression was "the spirit that quickeneth"; the spirit of effort, of discipline, of the fellowship of cohesion of organization—spreading out from the personality at the desk in this room down through all the units to the men themselves. Though officers and soldiers rarely saw him they had felt the impulse of his spirit soon after he had taken command. A new era had come in France. That old organization called the British Empire, loose and decentrated—and holding together because it was so—had taken another step forward in the gathering of its strength into a compact force.