CHAPTER VII THE SOLDIER

"With a tow-row-row-row-row-row for the British Grenadiers!" Which, of course, means the English Grenadiers, inasmuch as there never were any Scottish Grenadiers. To-day, however, the English do not sing this song. Their grandfathers delighted in it, and the tune still survives as a soldier-man's march. But when the modern English wish to celebrate the English soldier vocally, they do it in their own decadent, bathotic way. They have an idiot-song called Tommy Atkins. The chorus of it goes somewhat in this wise:

Oh! Tommy, Tommy Atkins,
You're a good 'un, heart and hand;
You're a credit to your nation
And to your native land.
[Pg 60]
May your hand be ever ready!
May your heart be ever true!
God bless you, Tommy Atkins!
Here's your country's love to you!

And since the outbreak of the late war, at any rate, the English do not speak of soldiers, but of Tommies; and the principal English poet has gone farther, and dubbed them Absent-Minded Beggars. Since the outbreak of the war, too, it has been necessary to issue from time to time words of caution to the great English public. Lord Roberts—"Little Bobs," I suppose, I should call him, in the choice English fashion—has on two or three occasions deemed it advisable to let it be known that his desire was that the great English public should discontinue the practice of treating Cape-bound or returned Tommies to alcoholic stimulants, and substitute therefor mineral waters or cocoa. This was very wise on Little Bobs's part, and it has no doubt saved at least two Cape-bound or returned Tommies from the degradation of an almighty drunk. I mention this because it illustrates in an exceedingly quaint[Pg 61] way the attitude of the English towards the soldier. When there is war toward, the soldier is absolutely the most popular kind of man in England. In peace-time an English soldier is commonly credited with being socially vile and unpresentable. There is a popular conundrum which runs, "What is the difference between a soldier and a meerschaum pipe?" and the answer, I regret to say, is, "One is the scum of the earth, and the other the scum of the sea." Tommy's place in the piping times of peace is just at the bottom of the social ladder; there he must stay, and drink four ale, and smoke cheap shag, and sit at the back of the gallery in places of amusement. Then war comes along, and the English bosom expands to the sound of the distant drum, and to the rumour of still more distant carnage. Who is it that's a-working this 'ere blooming war? Blest if it ain't our old friend Tommy Atkins! Fetch him out of the four-ale bar at once. The nation's heroes have no business in four-ale bars. The saloon bar is the place for them,[Pg 62] and the barmaid shall smile upon them, and they shall have free drinks and free cigars till all's blue; for they are the nation's heroes, and they deserve well of their country. Furthermore, if they wish to visit those great and glorious centres of enlightened entertainment commonly called the Halls, they shall no longer be stuffed obscurely away in the rear portion of the gallery, but they shall come out into the light of things; they shall come blushingly and amid acclaim into the pit or the stalls, or, for that matter, into any part of the 'ouse.

Throughout the war this has been so. It was so till yesterday. But the ancient English smugness has begun to assert itself once more; and Tommy—dear Tommy, God-bless-you Tommy, in fact—finds staring him in the face, as of yore, "Soldiers in uniform not served in this compartment"; "Soldiers in uniform cannot be admitted to any part of this theatre except the gallery." The English Kipling hit the whole matter off in his vulgar way when he wrote Tommy:

[Pg 63]

I went into a theatre as sober as could be;
They gave a drunk civilian room, but 'adn't none for me;
They sent me to a gallery, or round the music-'alls;
But when it comes to fightin'—Lord! they'll shove me in the stalls!

For it's Tommy this and Tommy that, an' "Tommy, wait outside";
But it's "Special train for Atkins" when the trooper's on the tide—
The troopship's on the tide, my boys—the troopship's on the tide
Oh! it's "Special train for Atkins" when the trooper's on the tide.

We were told that this war, if it were doing England no other good, was at least bringing her to a right understanding of the soldier-man. It was teaching her to take him by the hand, to recognise in him a creditable son and an essential factor in the State. It has ended in the way in which pretty well every English revival does end—namely, in smoke. Though England has as much need of the soldier and is as much dependent upon him for peace and security as any other nation, she has never been able—excepting, as I have said, in time of war—to bring her greedy mind to the pass of doing him the[Pg 64] smallest honour or of rendering to him that measure of social credit which is obviously his by right.

That the English Tommy is not altogether a delectable person, however, goes, I think, without saying. According to General Buller and other more or less competent authorities, the men in South Africa were splendid. I do not doubt it in the least. On the other hand, the "returns" from that country have not struck one as reaching a high standard of savouriness or manliness; and, however splendid he may have been as a campaigner, as an ex-campaigner the English Tommy has scarcely shone; so that in a sense the changed attitude of the English public mind towards him is not to be wondered at.

Elsewhere in this essay I have pointed out that the late war has not reflected any too much credit upon that chiefest of snobs—the English military officer. To go into the army has long been considered good form among the English Barbarians, and to be an officer in a swagger regiment may be reckoned[Pg 65] one of the best passports to English society. It gives a man a tone, and puts him on a footing with the highest, because an officer is a gentleman in a very special sense. But it is well known that, during the past half-century or so, the English Barbarians have been too prone to put their sons into the army for social considerations only, and without regard to their qualification or call for the profession of arms. And in the long result it has come to pass that the English army is officered by men who know as little as possible and care a great deal less about their profession, and are compelled to leave the instruction, and as often as not the leadership, of their men to non-commissioned officers. Over and over again in the South African campaign it was the commissioned officer who blundered and brought about disaster, and the non-commissioned officers and the horse sense of the rank and file that saved whatever of the situation there might be left to save. Probably the true history of the British reverses, major and minor, in[Pg 66] South Africa will never be made public. But I believe it can be shown that in almost every instance it was the incapacity or remissness of the English commissioned officer which lay at the root of the trouble. The fact is, that the monocled mountebank who is in the army, don't you know, seldom or never understands his job. He is too busy messing, and dancing, and flirting, and philandering, and racing, and gambling, and speeding the time merrily, ever to learn it. That the honour of Britain, and the lives of Englishmen, Scotsmen, and Irishmen, should be in his listless, damp hand for even as long as five minutes is an intolerable scandal. That he should haw and haw, and yaw and yaw, on the barrack-square, and take a salary out of the public purse for doing it, shows exactly how persistently stupid the English can be. Of course, the common reply to any attack upon these shallow-pated incompetents is that you must have gentlemen for the King's commissions, and that the pay the King's commissions carry is so inadequate that no[Pg 67] gentleman unpossessed of private means can afford to take one. This is a very pretty argument and exceedingly English. The money will not run to capable men; therefore let us fling it away on fools. Army reform, sweeping changes at the War Office, new army regulations, an army on a business footing, and so on and so forth, are always being clamoured for by the English people, and always being promised by the English Government. But until the day when the granting of commissions and promotion are as little dependent upon social influence and the influence of money as advancement in the law or advancement in the arts, the English army will remain just where it is and just as rotten as it is.

For downright childishness the modern English soldier, whether he be officer or file-man, has perhaps no compeer. When the South African War broke out, Tommy and his officers were men of scarlet and pipe-clay and gold lace and magnificent head-dresses. Also all drill was in close order; you were to[Pg 68] shove in your infantry first, supported by your artillery, and deliver your last brilliant stroke with your cavalry. The men should go into the fray with bands playing, flags flying, and dressed as for parade. You commenced operations with move No. 1; the enemy would assuredly reply with move No. 2; you would then rush in with move No. 3; there would be a famous victory, and the streets of London would be illuminated at great expense. In South Africa matters did not quite pan out that way; the enemy declined absolutely to play the stereotyped war-game, for the very simple reason that they did not know it, and that South Africa is not quite of the contour of a chess-board. And so the English had to change their cherished system, and to learn to ride, and to throw their pretty uniforms into the old-clothes baskets, and to get out of their old drill into a drill which was no drill at all, and to give up resting their last hope on the British square, and to get accustomed to deadly conflict with an enemy whom they[Pg 69] never saw and who never took the trouble to inform them whether they had beaten him or not. It was all very trying and all very bewildering, and it is to the credit of the English army that in the course of a year or two it did actually manage to understand the precise nature of the work cut out for it and made some show of dealing with it in a workman-like way.

Here was a lesson for us, and we learned it. An Englishman, you know, can learn anything when he makes up his mind to it. And he has learned this South African lesson thoroughly well; so well, indeed, that it looks like being the only lesson he will be able to repeat any time in the next half-century. For what has he done? Well, to judge by appearances, we must reason this way: "I was not prepared for this South African business. It was a new thing to me. It gave me a new notion of the whole art and practice of war. The old authorities were clean out of it. Therefore I solemnly abjure the old authorities. For the future I wear[Pg 70] slouch-hats and khaki and puttees and a jacket full of pockets, and I drill for the express notion that I may some day meet a Boer farmer. The entire sartorial and general aspect of my army shall be remodelled on lines which might induce one to think that the sole enemy of mankind was Mr. Kruger, and the great military centre of the world was Pretoria." It does not seem to occur to the poor body that his next great trial is not in the least likely to overtake him in South Africa. He has had to fight on the Continent of Europe before to-day, and I shall not be surprised if he has to do it again before many years have passed over his head. Yet, wherever his next large fighting has to be done, you will find that he will sail into it in his good old infantile, stupid English way, armed cap-a-pie for the special destruction of Boers. It is just gross want of sense, and that is all that can be said for it.