Ordeal by Battle

by Frederick Scott Oliver

The main consideration arising out of this analysis was of course the inadequacy of the British Army to make good the numerical deficiency of the Triple Entente in the Western theatre during the onset and the grip of war. Supposing England to be involved in a European war, which ran its course and was brought to a conclusion with the same swiftness which had characterised every other European war within the last half century, how were our half-made and our unmade troops to be rendered efficient in time to effect the result in any way whatsoever?

SCARCITY OF OFFICERS

There was yet another consideration of great gravity. If our full Expeditionary Force were sent abroad we should have to strain our resources to the utmost to bring it up to its full nominal strength and keep it there. The wastage of war would necessarily be very severe in the case of so small a force; especially heavy in the matter of officers. Consequently, from the moment when this force set sail, there would be a dearth of officers in the United Kingdom competent to train the Special Reserve, the Territorial Army, and the raw recruits. Every regular and reserve officer in the country would be required in order to mobilise the Expeditionary Force, and keep it up to its full strength during the first six months. As things then stood there was a certainty—in case of war—of a very serious shortage of officers of suitable experience and age to undertake the duties, which were required under our recently devised military system.[[12]]

Half-made soldiers and raw material alike would therefore be left to the instruction of amateur or hastily improvised officers—zealous and intelligent men without a doubt; but unqualified, owing to their own lack of experience, for training raw troops, so as to place them rapidly on an equality with the armies to which they would find themselves opposed. What the British system contemplated, was as if you were to send away the headmaster, and the assistant-masters, and the under-masters, leaving the school in charge of pupil-teachers.

In no profession is the direct personal influence of teaching and command more essential than in the soldier's. In none are good teachers and leaders more able to shorten and make smooth the road to confidence and efficiency. Seeing that we had chosen to depend so largely upon training our army after war began, it might have been supposed, that at least we should have taken care to provide ourselves with a sufficient number of officers and non-commissioned officers, under whose guidance the course of education would be made as thorough and as short as possible. This was not the case. Indeed the reverse was the case. Instead of possessing a large number of officers and non-commissioned officers, beyond those actually required at the outbreak of war for the purpose of starting with, and repairing the wastage in the Expeditionary Force, we were actually faced, as things then stood, with a serious initial shortage of the officers required for this one purpose alone.

Lord Haldane in framing the army system which is associated with his name chose to place his trust in a small, highly-trained expeditionary force for immediate purposes, to be supplemented at a later date—if war were obliging enough to continue for so long—by a new army of which the Territorials formed the nucleus, and which would not begin its real training until after the outbreak of hostilities. Under the most favourable view this plan was a great gamble; for it assumed that in the war which was contemplated, the onset and the grip periods would be passed through without crushing disaster, and that England would, in due course, have an opportunity of making her great strength felt in the drag. It will be said that Lord Haldane's assumption has been justified by recent events, and in a sense this is true; but by what merest hair-breadth escape, by what sacrifices on the part of our Allies, at what cost in British lives, with what reproach to our national good name, we have not yet had time fully to realise.

But crediting Lord Haldane's system, if we may, with an assumption which has been proved correct, we have reason to complain that he did not act boldly on this assumption and make his scheme, such as it was, complete and effective. For remember, it was contemplated that the great new army, which was to defend the existence of the British Empire in the final round of war, should be raised and trained upon the voluntary principle—upon a wave of patriotic enthusiasm—after war broke out. This new army would have to be organised, clothed, equipped, armed, and supplied with ammunition. The 'voluntary principle' did not apply to matters of this kind. It might therefore have been expected that stores would be accumulated, and plans worked out upon the strictest business principles, with philosophic thoroughness, and in readiness for an emergency which might occur at any moment.

WANT OF STORES AND PLANS

Moral considerations which precluded 'conscription' did not, and could not, apply to inanimate material of war, or to plans and schedules of army corps and camps, or to a body of officers enlisted of their own free will. It may have been true that to impose compulsory training would have offended the consciences of free-born Britons; but it was manifestly absurd to pretend that the accumulation of adequate stores of artillery and small arms, of shells and cartridges, of clothing and equipment, could offend the most tender conscience—could offend anything indeed except the desire of the tax-payer to pay as few taxes as possible.

If the British nation chose to bank on the assumption, that it would have the opportunity given it of 'making good' during the drag of war, it should have been made to understand what this entailed in the matter of supplies; and most of all in reserve of officers. All existing forces should at least have been armed with the most modern weapons. There should have been arms and equipment ready for the recruits who would be required, and who were relied upon to respond to a national emergency. There should have been ample stores of every kind, including artillery, and artillery ammunition, for that Expeditionary Force upon which, during the first six months we had decided to risk our national safety.