BRITISH SOLDIERS

Evening Post, Volume CVIII, Issue 24, 27 July 1929, Page 20

BRITISH SOLDIERS

MEN WHO NEVER MUTINY

"It is not too much, I think, to say that wo owe our national existence to our regimental officers," declared Sir John Forteseue, who, in his Romanes lecture at Oxford recently, discussed the evolution of the British Army as an organised force, says the "Daily Telegraph."

"During tho late -war," Sir John said, "when every man of every nation was pressed into the ranks, there were grave mutinies in the organised forces of all the great military Powers — France, / Russia, Germany, Austria, Italy. ' There was none among the_ British. It is a strange pre-eminence in an unmilitary nation, but there never ha 3 been a serious mutiny in the British Army. There have been troubles in isolated regiments, but never any grave revolt since the days of Cromwell.

"Yet no organised force in the world lias boon so sorely provoked by national malignity and neglect. How has it escaped the accursed thing? I answer: Through the loyal patience of the officers and the trust of the men not in the State but in them.

"The British soldier has an extraordinary gift of making himself intelligible to all peoples, nations, and languages, and though he has entered many countries as a conqueror, there are few that he has not quitted as a friend.

"Officers and sergeants have gone forth, as it were, as. missiona .-ies to preach to scores of races, Christian and heathen, the gospel of their own long persecuted sect—service, obedience, sacrifice. Every soldier arid every constable of the Empire, be he of British descent, Bantu, Mongolian, what not, is the child of the British Army, and has unconsciously been endued with its spirit of modesty and patience. We take- it as a matter of course, but it is a very great achievement.

"Pax Eomana was great, but possibly centuries hence historians may agree that through tho peculiar schooling aud character of the British officer and soldier Pax Bomana was eclipsed by Pax Britaniuen."