USING COMMON SENSE.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXI, Issue 5, 22 August 1911, Page 8

USING COMMON SENSE.

A STORY BY SIR R. BADENPOWELL. Lieutenant-General Sir R. BadenPowell told a capita! story lately in a paper on Boy Scouts, read before a meeting in Loudon over which Lo: d Haldane presided. “The text which heads the syllabus of my lecture,” lie said—“ ’Jf yon want a man to be a soldier lie must be a man, and not a sheep’— is one the truth of which, 1 think, none of ns cun nowadays deny. When I began my service we were in the transition stage, when we wore

still being drilled, and when we were not allowed to develop in peace time what are termed the three C’s of a soldier—namely, Courage, Commonsense, and Cunning, I think I have suffered as much as most people in being hauled over the coals for ‘playing the fool instead of carrying out the manoeuvres.’

“I remember especially one oecassion in Ireland, many years ago, when I happened to be a very young captain in charge of a squadron, that I saw an euemey’s battery in action. Wo crept along by a hollow road until wo got right in front of it, under a crest of the hill, unseen by either the battery or its escort—which was doing its proper duty as was laid down in those times—i.o., looking to its “front.” Wo came up to the battery at about 10 yards distance,“ and walked into it and captured it. Well, the officer in command of the escort said that, being a dry, hot day, he naturally expected wo should kick up some dust, and merely sat there looking around for any dust in the distance. As we did not happen to make much dust he had not noticed ns. Next day it happened, going across some hills, wo found this same battery in action again, with the same escort looking out for dust. Wo thought it a pity not to oblige. A few soldiers, under an astute sergeant, armed with lossocs on their saddles, cut down a few branches of trees and rode along at a trot in a shallow road some little distance to the front of the escort. They towed these branches along behind them, thereby kicking up an enormous dust. Away wont the cavalry after them, and we merely then walked into the battery again, this time from the rear. Wo were just congratulating ourselves on having done a clover thing—for ns—when an aide-de-camp came galloping down .and said that the Commander in Chief wanted the officer in charge of the squadron. Well, the feeling came to me—as I suppose it has to many of you—as il somebody had poured a quantity of cold oil down inside you. I rode off with the galloper, thinking of what my next profession in life would bo after I left the Army. When I got to the Commander in Chief he said; ‘Did you do this thing?’ I said, ‘Well, sir, my squadron did.’ I dared not look at him as I said that, but when I did look I found ho was laughing. He patted ms on the back and said: ‘That is the sort of thing I want to see—use of your commonsense.’ 1 felt myself blushing down to my toes. That general was Lord Wolseley. A new era had dawned.. There was no longer any regard paid to the red-tape fetish; we realised that wo were not to slavishly follow drill-books but that we had to use our commonsense as occasion demanded. That system has continued to develop up to the present time; we train our soldiers each as an individual to use his commonssnse, and to be a man, instead of being merely a machine.”