Battalion Orders Lieutenant Blase-Bones, having left to rejoin his unit, is struck off the strength of the Battalion. (Verb. sap.) OUR DEAR OLD COMMANDANT. If we thought a lot of our school, and did our best to keep up its good name, this was due not to a swelling admiration of the military system, but mainly to a sense of patriotism. It was also a tribute of respect to our commandant. He was not a brilliant man, and in some things was an absolute fire-eater. However, his bark was worse than his bite, and he improved on acquaintance. The Old Man was sincere. He was no sneak. There was nothing petty in his decisions, and little things revealed a passionate love of his ‘boys’ rather than a selfish love of his job. In his day he had been a gallant soldier and ‘a bit of a lad.’ As a man of the world, he understood human nature, and his one desire was to have a happy and successful unit. He had a hard-working but not a brilliant staff. Brilliant men are scarce as instructors in cadet schools. The military system, even to-day, is not kind to brilliance. It is afraid of genius. Genius even in this war has too often been attacked and destroyed. On the other hand, it is just to note that the brilliant men who have survived the ordeal of jealousy are all at the front, and therefore beyond the reach of cadet schools. What a pity! For in these cadet schools men hunger for more light and congenial thought. Captain Cheerall, I may say, was the great exception. It is good to write such things. The War Office ought certainly to know them. The reason it doesn’t know is that those who are running these schools are afraid to be frank. Push-and-go is not appreciated by certain soft-jobbers in the Home Commands; and they have a quiet but brutal way of dispensing with men who want to be ‘American’ and revolutionise our whole system of military education. It is imagined by military mandarins that we cadets don’t know and don’t see anything. What a blunder! At our school, and at every other cadet school, you can find the cream of intellect studying for commissions. The nation is in arms. And many a lecturer ignores the fact that he is talking to men with the highest university degrees. These men in our school never declared they had nothing to learn. Indeed, they promptly realised their appalling deficiencies in military education. They hungered for learning. When they got a little, they wanted more; and a good lecturer always left the room to the accompaniment of resounding cheers. This attitude of cadets is in striking contrast with the attitude of those who regard them as ‘a d—— lot of Tommies who want knocking about.’ We never objected to being knocked about, even by the sergeant-major from the Guards. But what we did resent was the visit of silly old fools, who talked a lot of rot and gave us no intellectual food. We were not blind, and all of us had ‘been out.’ If we were deficient in higher strategy, we had a share of common-sense. Had a War Office inspector tumbled into our midst disguised as a cadet, he would have heard frank appreciation of all that was good, and a damning indictment of all that was bad. The greatest weakness of the military system is that it declines to be told, seldom asks for suggestions, and is up against an intellectual aristocracy. This fear of intellect has been our curse in this war. And only one statesman has fought for ‘The New School.’ That man is David Lloyd George. But even Lloyd George has found that he cannot entirely eradicate the fossilised follies of the old régime.CHAPTER XIII.