A little later I visited another army school, or rather an army college, for there line and staff officers of superior rank were under instruction. Our army authorities do not intend to repeat the mistakes of the Civil War in regard to superior officers. It has been said that it took only a year to teach the rank and file of our men to fight, but that we fought for two years to train lieutenants and captains, and three years to train generals. The war was ended in one more year.
This war college in France, where some great general may now be in training, perhaps for the highest command of all, is located in a medieval town which must have seen a lot of fighting in the distant past. Its stout city walls still stand, and it is plain that a long battle would have to be fought before the besieging army reached the walls. The town stands on a rocky height little accessible in the old days. Below stretches a level plain where all the enemy’s movements would have been visible for miles.
It is an appropriate place in which to train future American generals, for this war is being fought, not only with all modern weapons, but with many of the weapons of the past. One can easily fancy the ghosts of the great Charlemagne, Godfrey of Bouillon, Richard Lion Heart, Sir John Chandos, hovering in the shadows of the classrooms, and listening delightedly to familiar things, talk of liquid fire, hand grenades, storming positions with bayonets and long knives.
But the ghostly warriors would hear other talk, and when final examination time came, I imagine that they might thank their stars that they were safely dead, for this war makes demands on the intelligence of commanding officers that the middle ages wotted nothing of.
I took a brief survey of one examination paper in which it was put up to a commander to move several divisions of men from one district in France to the fighting front. He had a railroad map of France before him and he was required to state at length and in detail exactly how and when and where he would entrain his one hundred and twenty-five thousand men; when and where he would stop each unit for meals; what he would do with his men when they left the railroad; what villages and towns he would occupy; where he would billet the soldiers; how and with what he would feed and supply them; how he would move supplies. It made my head swim, but it also made my heart swell with proud confidence in our army.
Efficiency! There is only one real and permanent efficiency. It is not possible to achieve it under a slave system. It can only be achieved by freemen, willing to follow their chosen leaders into the valley of the shadow of death if that is the road through which more freedom, freedom of all the world, is to be gained.
CHAPTER VII
OUR BOYS DISCOVER THE PAST
“Voilà,” said the old French general who sat opposite me in the Bordeaux express, “behold the prettiest sight in France.” He pointed through the open door of the compartment to two soldiers who were standing in the corridor smoking their after-luncheon cigarettes.
One of the soldiers wore a horizon blue uniform, a little worn and stained with hard usage, although the boy was barely twenty-one. The other soldier’s uniform was brand new O. D. cloth, made in America. The two stood beside the window, their arms entwined, looking at the lovely valley of the Loire and teaching each other their respective languages.
“Sammee,” said the French soldier, “how you say ‘donnes moi une allumette’?”