THE STAFF COLLEGE AND THE WAR.

Press, Volume LVII, Issue 10636, 21 April 1900, Page 8

THE STAFF COLLEGE AND THE WAR.

The following letter, which appeared in the "Pioneer Mail," of India, on January 19th (before the battle of Spion Kop) is of interest at the present juncture: —

"I think the difficulties our 'troops have fallen into in Natal, may be accounted for in some measure by the idiosyncracies of the officers in command. It is, and has been for some years, a commojn saying at Home 'Oh Buller does not care a damn about anyone or anyone's orders; he always does as he likes.' This disposition has a certain reflex action, and the officer who won't obey orders, seldom gets his own orders obeyed, and it is quite fair that things should work out like this. Last autumn, I was watching Aldershot manoeuvres, under Hildyard and Hart (two of Buller's Generals at the Tugela), and I asked a cavalry officer what they were doing, ajid _ts answer was, 'Oh, Hildyard and Jb'itzroy Hart are jarring over their orders; they always argue about everything and waste half the day. Staff Collegers, you know, want to march a corporal's guard by higa mathematics and always finish by doing what they are told not'to do; then we have to listen to an hour's "pow wow" at the end of the day, while they argue that they could not have done anything else.' In this playful exag_%r'ation ithere is a considerable grain of truth; and if, as the correspondents assert, Hart did not go to the position Lord Buller intended and ordered, and if Hildyard went further than he ijNs ordered, and if Barton (another Staff College Aldersbat; General) lost himself altogether, Buller must bear the blame; for h e deliberately selected his Generals and Staff for being Staff College Officers, though it is well known throughout the service that the educational officer is mor_ useful in quarters than in the field. Thus, Gatacre and Clery, both late professors at the Staff College, have not shone in the field. Carleton, "who surrendered the column at Nicholsen's Nek, Colonel Bullock, who got the Devons into a mess and had to surrender, and poor Colonel Watson of the Suffolks, who apparently walked into the middle of the Boers, were all Staff College officers. On, the other hand, the officers who have distinguished themselves—Yule, French, Hunter (Ladysmith), Baden-Powell (Mafeking), Kekewich (Kimberley) are not Staff College officers. The experience of the Frontier Campaign of 1897 was much the same. We learn by a recent telegram from England that the Staff College has put up its shutters, and is to be closed indefinitely. Letjis hope wihen it opens again the course will be a purely professional one, and that a facility for acquiring languages, science and mathematics will not give an officer a claim to high command in the field or even to a minor staff appointment. The very officer, feildyard, who is responsible for the loss of the guns in. front of Colenso, through not seeing they were properly protected when tlhey advanced, is the late" Commandant, Staff College, on whose "ipse dixit" every officer depended as to whether he was considered fit to hold a staff appointment."