CHAPTER IV.
The Officers
American volunteer officer.
American volunteer officer.
To strike a comparison between the British and the American officer, we do not need to go further into their military career than their first schooling at the government institutions. The fact that the English cadet receives eighteen months’ training, ending with an indifferent examination, while the West Pointer is given four years of the most difficult work, both mental and physical, known to the military world, indicates the whole story.
Yet, up to the time of the breaking out of the war in South Africa, the British officers were generally considered to be at the head of their profession. The colonies were taught to look up to them in everything that pertained to the service; the European and American War Departments considered them models to be studied. But six months’ campaigning against a practical and astute foe proved many of them as clumsy of mind and as inefficient as the officers of King George III. who surrendered to Gates and Washington. The modern British officer has received the pin-prick of active duty against modern fighters; his inflation has vanished.
The exposure was sure to come in his first meeting with a clever enemy. It cannot be expected that a man can become proficient in the art of war after eighteen months’ superficial training, or after a year’s service in the militia. In times of peace he leaves all the duty pertaining to his regiment to his competent non-commissioned staff, and his sole duty has seemed to be to attend social functions, play polo, cricket, or ride steeple-chases. The sergeant-majors knew the work and did it; they attended to the tasks that should have been done by the subaltern officers; and they performed that work so well that the regimental business proceeded in a neat and harmonious manner, for which the officers took the credit. Now comes the time when aptness in society, polo, and cricket does not cut any figure in the problem to be solved. Actual war with a keen-witted enemy stares the gorgeous officers in the face, and they suffer from their own ignorance simply because, with all their personal courage—and there are no braver in the world than some of them—they have not learned their most obvious business.