Idle Ideas in 1905 Part 7

The squad halted.

"Who the thunder, and the blazes, and other things told you to do that?"

The squad looked bewildered, but said nothing, and were brought back to the place where they were before. A minute later precisely the same thing occurred again. I really thought the sergeant would burst. I was preparing to hasten to the barracks for medical aid. But the paroxysm pa.s.sed. Calling upon the combined forces of heaven and h.e.l.l to sustain him in his trouble, he requested his squad, as man to man, to inform him of the reason why to all appearance they were dispensing with his services and drilling themselves.

At this moment "Columbus" barked again, and the explanation came to him.

"Please go away, sir," he requested me. "How can I exercise my men with that dog of yours interfering every five minutes?"

It was not only on that occasion. It happened at other times. The dog seemed to understand and take a pleasure in it. Sometimes meeting a soldier, walking with his sweetheart, Columbus, from behind my legs, would bark suddenly. Immediately the man would let go the girl and proceed, involuntarily, to perform military tricks.

The War Office authorities accused me of having trained the dog. I had not trained him: that was his natural voice. I suggested to the War Office authorities that instead of quarrelling with my dog for talking his own language, they should train their sergeants to use English.

They would not see it. Unpleasantness was in the air, and, living where I did at the time, I thought it best to part with Columbus. I could see what the War Office was driving at, and I did not desire that responsibility for the inefficiency of the British Army should be laid at my door.

Some twenty years ago we, in London, were pa.s.sing through a riotous period, and a call was made to law-abiding citizens to enrol themselves as special constables. I was young, and the hope of trouble appealed to me more than it does now. In company with some five or six hundred other more or less respectable citizens, I found myself one Sunday morning in the drill yard of the Albany Barracks. It was the opinion of the authorities that we could guard our homes and protect our wives and children better if first of all we learned to roll our "eyes right" or left at the given word of command, and to walk with our thumbs stuck out.

Accordingly a drill sergeant was appointed to instruct us on these points. He came out of the canteen, wiping his mouth and flicking his leg, according to rule, with the regulation cane. But, as he approached us, his expression changed. We were stout, pompous-looking gentlemen, the majority of us, in frock coats and silk hats. The sergeant was a man with a sense of the fitness of things. The idea of shouting and swearing at us fell from him: and that gone there seemed to be no happy medium left to him. The stiffness departed from his back. He met us with a defferential att.i.tude, and spoke to us in the language of social intercourse.

"Good morning, gentlemen," said the sergeant.

"Good morning," we replied: and there was a pause.

The sergeant fidgetted upon his feet. We waited.

"Well, now, gentlemen," said the sergeant, with a pleasant smile, "what do you say to falling in?"

We agreed to fall in. He showed us how to do it. He cast a critical eye along the back of our rear line.

"A little further forward, number three, if you don't mind, sir," he suggested.

Number three, who was an important-looking gentleman, stepped forward.

The sergeant cast his critical eye along the front of the first line.

"A little further back, if you don't mind, sir," he suggested, addressing the third gentleman from the end.

"Can't," explained the third gentleman, "much as I can do to keep where I am."

The sergeant cast his critical eye between the lines.

"Ah," said the sergeant, "a little full-chested, some of us. We will make the distance another foot, if you please, gentlemen."

In pleasant manner, like to this, the drill proceeded.

"Now then, gentlemen, shall we try a little walk? Quick march! Thank you, gentlemen. Sorry to trouble you, but it may be necessary to run-forward I mean, of course.. So if you really do not mind, we will now do the double quick. Halt! And if next time you can keep a little more in line-it has a more imposing appearance, if you understand me.

The breathing comes with practice."

If the thing must be done at all, why should it not be done in this way?

Why should not the sergeant address the new recruits politely:

"Now then, you young chaps, are you all ready? Don't hurry yourselves: no need to make hard work of what should be a pleasure to all of us.

That's right, that's very good indeed-considering you are only novices.

But there is still something to be desired in your att.i.tude, Private Bully-boy. You will excuse my being personal, but are you knock-kneed naturally? Or could you, with an effort, do you think, contrive to give yourself less the appearance of a marionette whose strings have become loose? Thank you, that is better. These little things appear trivial, I know, but, after all, we may as well try and look our best-

"Don't you like your boots, Private Montmorency? Oh, I beg your pardon.

I thought from the way you were bending down and looking at them that perhaps their appearance was dissatisfying to you. My mistake.

"Are you suffering from indigestion, my poor fellow? Shall I get you a little brandy? It isn't indigestion. Then what's the matter with it?

Why are you trying to hide it? It's nothing to be ashamed of. We've all got one. Let it come forward man. Let's see it."

Having succeeded, with a few such kindly words, in getting his line into order, he would proceed to recommend healthy exercise.

"Shoulder arms! Good, gentlemen, very good for a beginning. Yet still, if I may be critical, not perfect. There is more in this thing than you might imagine, gentlemen. May I point out to Private Henry Thompson that a musket carried across the shoulder at right angles is apt to inconvenience the gentleman behind. Even from the point of view of his own comfort, I feel sure that Private Thompson would do better to follow the usual custom in this matter.

"I would also suggest to Private St. Leonard that we are not here to practice the art of balancing a heavy musket on the outstretched palm of the hand. Private St. Leonard's performance with the musket is decidedly clever. But it is not war.

"Believe me, gentlemen, this thing has been carefully worked out, and no improvement is likely to result from individual effort. Let our idea be uniformity. It is monotonous, but it is safe. Now, then, gentlemen, once again."

The drill yard would be converted into a source of innocent delight to thousands. "Officer and gentleman" would become a phrase of meaning. I present the idea, for what it may be worth, with my compliments, to Pall Mall.

The fault of the military man is that he studies too much, reads too much history, is over reflective. If, instead, he would look about him more he would notice that things are changing. Someone has told the British military man that Waterloo was won upon the playing fields of Eton. So he goes to Eton and plays. One of these days he will be called upon to fight another Waterloo: and afterwards-when it is too late-they will explain to him that it was won not upon the play field but in the cla.s.s room.

From the mound on the old Waterloo plain one can form a notion of what battles, under former conditions, must have been. The other battlefields of Europe are rapidly disappearing: useful Dutch cabbages, as Carlyle would have pointed out with justifiable satisfaction, hiding the theatre of man's childish folly. You find, generally speaking, cobblers happily employed in cobbling shoes, women gossipping cheerfully over the washtub on the spot where a hundred years ago, according to the guide-book, a thousand men dressed in blue and a thousand men dressed in red rushed together like quarrelsome fox-terriers, and worried each other to death.

But the field of Waterloo is little changed. The guide, whose grandfather was present at the battle-quite an extraordinary number of grandfathers must have fought at Waterloo: there must have been whole regiments composed of grandfathers-can point out to you the ground across which every charge was delivered, can show you every ridge, still existing, behind which the infantry crouched. The whole business was began and finished within a s.p.a.ce little larger than a square mile. One can understand the advantage then to be derived from the perfect moving of the military machine; the uses of the echelon, the purposes of the linked battalion, the manipulation of centre, left wing and right wing.

Then it may have been worth while-if war be ever worth the while-which grown men of sense are beginning to doubt-to waste two years of a soldier's training, teaching him the goose-step. In the twentieth century, teaching soldiers the evolutions of the Thirty Years' War is about as sensible as it would be loading our iron-clads with canvas.

I followed once a company of Volunteers across Blackfriars Bridge on their way from Southwark to the Temple. At the bottom of Ludgate Hill the commanding officer, a young but conscientious gentleman, ordered "Left wheel!" At once the vanguard turned down a narrow alley-I forget its name-which would have led the troop into the purlieus of Whitefriars, where, in all probability, they would have been lost for ever. The whole company had to be halted, right-about-faced, and retired a hundred yards.

Then the order "Quick march!" was given. The vanguard shot across Ludgate Circus, and were making for the Meat Market.

At this point that young commanding officer gave up being a military man and talked sense.

"Not that way," he shouted: "up Fleet Street and through Middle Temple Lane."

Then without further trouble the army of the future went upon its way.

OUGHT STORIES TO BE TRUE?

THERE was once upon a time a charming young lady, possessed of much taste, who was asked by her anxious parent, the years pa.s.sing and family expenditure not decreasing, which of the numerous and eligible young men then paying court to her she liked the best. She replied, that was her difficulty; she could not make up her mind which she liked the best.

They were all so nice. She could not possibly select one to the exclusion of all the others. What she would have liked would have been to marry the lot; but that, she presumed, was impracticable.

I feel I resemble that young lady, not so much in charm and beauty as in indecision of mind, when the question is that of my favourite author or my favourite book. It is as if one were asked one's favourite food.

There are times when one fancies an egg with one's tea. On other occasions one dreams of a kipper. To-day one clamours for lobsters.

To-morrow one feels one never wishes to see a lobster again. One determines to settle down, for a time, to a diet of bread and milk and rice pudding. Asked suddenly to say whether I preferred ices to soup, or beef-steak to caviare, I should be completely nonplussed.