From a New Book

Dominion, Volume 28, Issue 122, 16 February 1935, Page 13

From a New Book

CROMWELL THE SOLDIER We may pause to consider Cromwell’s place in the roll of the great captains. 'He was a pioneer, as he was bound to. be, for he diet not belong to the hierarchy of professional men-at-arms. Like Caesar he took the field as an elderly party politician, but Caesar began with the rudiments of a soldier’s training, and Oliver had none. He had no military bible behind him; he had no practical experience in arms; therefore he did not begin with a body of doctrine, which Napoleon seems bo have 'valued higner than experience. ... Fortunately he lived in a transition period of the art of war, and the traditional technique was largely in the melting-pot. He brought to the business a clear notion of what arms must effect, and he set himself to learn the best way of doing, it. He had certain natural assets. One was the practical man’s power of organisation, acquired from his ordinary life, a kind of training which isjjiven to few soldiers. . . .

He gave England in eight years a new military organisation, built up on the direct needs of the case, and he gave his men a compactness and discipline which had not been matched since the Roman legions. That is his first claim to military greatness. ... In the second place he was a superb cavalry leader. He was always a lover of horses, and his practical instinqjj taught him at the start the importance of cavalry. . . . His aim was to win not a section of a battle, but the whole battle; not to defeat the enemy, but to destroy him.—From "Oliver Cromwell.” by John Buchan.