第53章 THE RIDDLE OF THE BRITISH(2)

But I will not expand further upon the general impression made by the English in France.Philippe Millet's /En Liaison avec les Anglais/ gives in a series of delightful pictures portraits of British types from the French angle.There can be little doubt that the British quality, genial naive, plucky and generous, has won for itself a real affection in France wherever it has had a chance to display itself....

But when it comes to British methods then the polite Frenchman's difficulties begin.Translating hints into statements and guessing at reservations, I would say that the French fall very short of admiration of the way in which our higher officers set about their work, they are disagreeably impressed by a general want of sedulousness and close method in our leading.They think we economise brains and waste blood.They are shocked at the way in which obviously incompetent or inefficient men of the old army class are retained in their positions even after serious failures, and they were profoundly moved by the bad staff work and needlessly heavy losses of our opening attacks in July.They were ready to condone the blunderings and flounderings of the 1915 offensive as the necessary penalties of an "amateur" army, they had had to learn their own lesson in Champagne, but they were surprised to find how much the British had still to learn in July, 1916.The British officers excuse themselves because, they plead, they are still amateurs."That is no reason," says the Frenchman, "why they should be amateurish."No Frenchman said as much as this to me, but their meaning was as plain as daylight.I tackled one of my guides on this matter; Isaid that it was the plain duty of the French military people to criticise British military methods sharply if they thought they were wrong."It is not easy," he said."Many British officers do not think they have anything to learn.And English people do not like being told things.What could we do? We could hardly send a French officer or so to your headquarters in a tutorial capacity.You have to do things in your own way." When I tried to draw General Castelnau into this dangerous question by suggesting that we might borrow a French general or so, he would say only, "There is only one way to learn war, and that is to make war." When it was too late, in the lift, I thought of the answer to that.There is only one way to make war, and that is by the sacrifice of incapables and the rapid promotion of able men.If old and tried types fail now, new types must be sought.

But to do that we want a standard of efficiency.We want a conception of intellectual quality in performance that is still lacking....

M.Joseph Reinach, in whose company I visited the French part of the Somme front, was full of a scheme, which he has since published, for the breaking up and recomposition of the French and British armies into a series of composite armies which would blend the magnificent British manhood and material with French science and military experience.He pointed out the endless advantages of such an arrangement; the stimulus of emulation, the promotion of intimate fraternal feeling between the peoples of the two countries."At present," he said, "no Frenchman ever sees an Englishman except at Amiens or on the Somme.Many of them still have no idea of what the English are doing....""Have I ever told you the story of compulsory Greek at Oxford and Cambridge?" I asked abruptly.

"What has that to do with it?"

"Or how two undistinguished civil service commissioners can hold up the scientific education of our entire administrative class?"M.Reinach protested further.

"Because you are proposing to loosen the grip of a certain narrow and limited class upon British affairs, and you propose it as though it were a job as easy as rearranging railway fares or sending a van to Calais.That is the problem that every decent Englishman is trying to solve to-day, every man of that Greater Britain which has supplied these five million volunteers, these magnificent temporary officers and all this wealth of munitions.

And the oligarchy is so invincibly fortified! Do you think it will let in Frenchmen to share its controls? It will not even let in Englishmen.It holds the class schools; the class universities; the examinations for our public services are its class shibboleths; it is the church, the squirearchy, the permanent army class, permanent officialdom; it makes every appointment, it is the fountain of honour; what it does not know is not knowledge, what it cannot do must not be done.It rules India ignorantly and obstructively; it will wreck the empire rather than relinquish its ascendancy in Ireland.It is densely self-satisfied and instinctively monopolistic.It is on our backs, and with it on our backs we common English must bleed and blunder to victory....And you make this proposal!"3

The antagonistic relations of the Anglican oligarchy with the greater and greater-spirited Britain that thrust behind it in this war are probably paralleled very closely in Germany, probably they are exaggerated in Germany with a bigger military oligarchy and a relatively lesser civil body under it.This antagonism is the oddest outcome of the tremendous /de-militarisation/ of war that has been going on.In France it is probably not so marked because of the greater flexibility and adaptability of the French culture.