THE NEW LEADERS.

Press, Volume LII, Issue 15746, 13 November 1916, Page 9

THE NEW LEADERS.

BRITAIN'S AMPLE SUPPLY OP OFFICERS. (By a Supernumerary in the London "Daily Mail.") Th© following article, ie very interesting in view of tbe constant repefilion of the assertion by tho Germans tliat it is impceaiWo for ua to create a sufficient number of officers. The cynic of tho battalion invented a new definition the other day. Ho looked round tie, mess, surveyed the crowded tables, and sighed. "A battalion," ho said, "is a small body of troops entirely surrounded by officers."' It was his way of commenting on the fact that our battalion, which is at present about soven hundred strong, owns rather more than eighty officers. Many months ago. when 1 enlisted, officers were scarce and frequently peculiar. On tho rare occasions when a second lientenant turned up to command. onr platoon we did not rejoice. The chances were that ho knew less about the work than we did ourselves, and that he would give us startling orders which would leave us under the necessity of guessing what ho meant to say and doing that instead of the thing commanded. We understood the position,, of course. You cannot improvise officers. When the war began thero was only the comparatively small body of the officers of tho Regular Army to draw ujjon. They were hnrried off to the i I front, and the fields of France hold I most of them in keeping till tho day ! when the dead shall rise. After them were sent the men who had done years of patient, faithful as officers in the Territorial battalions. The country was ransacked for men with the right kind of knowledge and experience, and they were sent" off with the new armies. And then for a timo the majority of tho men who were available to train tho recruiting battalions were themselves in most desperate need of training. For a timo we, tho trainers and tho men in training, were floundering together in ownderful confusion, and brigadiers were reduced to a state of apoplectic dismay. Mind, not one of us whd knew them has a word to say aginst those men. Very gajlant fellows they wero, so many of them. They had been pitched into an entirely Jitew job and thoy had it all to learn. And some of us know how they toiled to learn it, with what relentless self-sacrifieo they worked to make themselves fit to servo their country's occasion. And ..they have served, many of them to the death.

THE NEW COLONEL. For all this was many months ago. When our cynic invented tho definition I quoted just now he was referring to the new order which is in existence to-day. There is no shortage of officers now, nor will there ever bo again. No matter how many thousands of thousands are called to the colours, there will be men. to command them, men who know their business, who learnt it in the sharp school of the trenches, who bear on their bodies the marks of the discipline they have endured. If you wero to look round our mess and contemplate our eighty odd officers you would be looking at men 75 per cent, of whom have been wounded at the front. They iorned directly the war began. A few brief weeks of training, and they wero hustled off to Franej There they fought and endured till there came the bullet, the shrapnel, or the fragment of shell uhicn mado a panso in their warfare, j Thcv came home to bo healed, and now they are preparing to command as once they served. And with their'hands they will write tho doom of the German Empire. I want to insist on that. Some of tho most acute observers may miss the point altogether, because they have never been :n the proper position to note the effect of tne coming of these men to bo the platoon commanders of the vast armies of to-dav. But when they began to arrive, back in tho summer, I chanced to bo in tho one place where it was possible to seo most plainly what it all meant-. No ono knows better than the platoon sergeant the effect and influence of the platoon commander.

They began to arrive. One day a rumour went round our camp. The battalion was as fine a collection of tougti and genial scoundrcls as one could find. It was not ono of those merry gangs of millionaire privates which were formed in the first days. The men were, most of them, of that good rough stuff of which the Army has been made since ;!:o beginning.

And sinco it luul boon in training {of some months it had no moro use for amateur officers, and it was ant to ho restive. But the rumour cajuo and tho men began to grow interested. It appeared that wo had indented for a new colonel, a man who luul boon wounded and patched together. Tho new colonol camo. In two days tho Ivittalion had learnt to stand to attention like soldiers, of years' standing. That «a s not at all because he cursed us with, hearty vigour tho first time ho met us. It was because wo felt that he was—different, lie knew things which we did not know, and in particular he know exactly what he wanted. And after him there came others. THE DAY IX THE WOOD .New officers began to arrive. They camo in twos and threes, and iliov went about their business without tuss and ■without ne.rvousness. They had no misunderstanding with their voices when it came to giving words of command, and 'thoy lenew exactly liow every detail of uniform and equipment siiould go. Some of them, it appeared, wero not very* strong. There were a few who never wont on route marches. Two or three were not seen lor days at tho time. Little by little, from. the gossip of officers' servants, orderlies, and tho m„st, the battalion discovered that all theso new- men were from the front, that manv of theni had been gassed so terribly that thev would never be really well again, that all of them had suffered in ono way or another. ... Uhcro camo a diffcrenro when the men wero talking among themselves. And at last thero was a day which, some of us will never forget. The battalion was a little stale, a triflo overtrained, and tho colonel arranged a little surprise for us. Rations were served out, and \\> marched off, as we thought, to another of the interminable iMd days. Hut a couple of miles from our camp wo were kxl into a great, dim wood of high trees, frca trom undergrowth between. Thero we were arranged in hollow squaro, with the band in the middle. Wo wero told to sit down and to eat our rations, and we were given to understand that if we smoketl cigarettes —a crimo on other occasions —no one would take any notice. While we ate, tho band played all our pot tunes, and then tho adjutant made a little speech. Tho colonel .thought, ho said, that we should likes to know something of what it was really liko at the front, so a few of thq officers were going; to givo us five-minuto accounts of their own experiences. Ho would lead the way himself. "We sat there for an hour, listening. Ono after the other our new officers gob up and tolcl us of what they had seen, and understanding came, oven to tho dullest among us. They had served, even as we were preparing to servo. They had seen and known. Wo gathered —though no one said as much—that they wero going to show us tho way to servo in our turn. Things were happening in tho hearts and minds of men as we listened, laughed, and listened again, and though 1 left that battalion soon after, I was -with it long enQUgh to know that, in th c old, unconquerable phrase, it had been born again on that day. "A small body of troops entirely surrounded by'officers." That is truo ab present, because the officers aro being prepared and, as it were, stored, to serve in thc new battalions now forming and to be formed. Tho men are coming, and tho leaders are ready for them —leaders who hav 0 been tried itt the furnace and proved. Curious, is it not, that tho bullets which wounded them wero forging tho weapon which shall destroy the power which sent the bullets on their way?