THE SILENCE OF LEADERSHIP

Dominion, Volume 12, Issue 69, 16 December 1918, Page 6

THE SILENCE OF LEADERSHIP

PROVERBIAL TACITURNITY OF WAR CHIEFS

HISTORIC INSTANCES

'A striking sidelight of the great war was Hie almost inscrutable silence of tlio fighting chiefs as contrasted wilh the loquacious babble of the Kaiser. Scarcely a sentence percolated from the lips of tlii» nraii on,whom rested all the strategy of the Allied forces. Amidst whirlwinds of sensation. Marshal Jj'oeh was impenetrable. Gossip sometimes invented or retailed some brief word ol his; but the busy world learnt nothing of the teeming thoughts of his unresting bruin. The first leaders in the German camp wee equally reticent. Neither Hindenburg nor T.udeudorff permitted so much as a whisper to pass his lips in the privacy of conversation. It was just the same with von Moltke in 1870. He was perhaps the,greatest of. modern strategists before Foch.- With him silence was almost a religion. If he could express liis will with a gesture lie preferred not to open. his lips at all. Thus, when he was dining, he. would point to the dish he desired, and his attendant learned to keep an eye alert for his master's hand mirier than an ear open for the. great man's voice. The general was in bed when news came that the French had declared war. An aide-de-camp woke him with the intelligence, upon which von Moltkc's sole comment before going to sleep again was; "Second pigeonhole on the right, first tier." There the amazed aide found a .bundle of papers containing mobilisation plans and an outline of the campaign with (he French. v ln the Napoleonic \wirs, the two great leaders stand out as exceptionally taciturn in all military' matters. Napoleon could bo a brilliant talker in State Councils aqd on social occasions. He had a quick wit and aMevel imagination. In the Tuileries, and when in captivity, he was given almost to exceed in conversational readiness. But it was quite otherwise when campaigning business was about. His lips wero bound with almost: iron clasp wheu he presided at n military council. All his other faculties were alive, as becomes a general. ' He • saw everything; heard everything; but of words he was a miser. When it was necessary to speak his phrases it ere as brief as they could be made. In half a dozen words ho could make clear more than another man could express in a hundred. And to such an extent did he carry his reserve that he disliked even to have his features studied, lest the words he did not utter might be read there. This fear led him to adopt the manoeuvre of first borrowing and then pocketing the scrutinising officer s snuff-bos, after which the offender's anxiety for the return of his property superseded all curiosity about the commander's facial expression. This amusing precaution was the result of an exaggerated fear, for Napoleon's face was trained in the. art of concealment as thoroughly as that of a seasoned poker player. Quite as remarkable in this respect was the Duke of Wellington. But it was with him shown in a different way. Even when he was in Parliament he was a. man sparing in speech. Ho rarely used two words when one expressed his'meaning. He had not the gift of speech which distinguished his. ereat' military antagonist, and was therefore not tempted to launch out much at any time. But in military matters his taciturnity was almost offensive to those who were in closest contact with him. His staff officers in the Peninsula campaign soinelmes felt humiliated at being taken so little into his confidence.

Lord Roberts, the. "Boiw" of the soldiers, was a man who on occasions could talk well, and whose kindly geniality ilVi I)0^ (l ll,m to n " change of ideas, tt lion'off duty—that is, in peace timehe put no curb at nil on himself; but wlien campaigning he was "oyster." Tt was very,' much the same with at least two of his most -redoubtable opponents in tho Boer Wnj& Joubert and Cronie preserved almost? the ' austerity of Quakers in speech; and Botha, though moro of a statesman than a military general, was also .very reserved during his campaigns. Marlborough lras a m . m of ite .. ft different type. As the young Churchill ho was talkativo onough, and even in atcr life in his domestic circle he could be as garrulous as a fishwife, and excelled in scolding conflicts with his duchess. But in his campaigns he was a transformed being. • He won everv battle ho fought, and captured every city that ever ho besieged. And he never wasted a syllable in giving command or in exacting a most rigid discipline and obedience. He was a dead.failure whero lie talked much, and the greatest success when ho kept silence. It seems to havo been very much the same in more antique days. Hannibal was perhaps one of the greatest commanders of all time, if we measure' ' his achievements for fifteen years in Italy with the means at his disposal; and aacordmg to all accounts he was one of the most silent in his councils. Ho made one short speech on the Alps, in some' checking words, to his half-trozen African troops. Once, hearing a philosopher lecture on military tactics, he was asked what he thought of tho discourse. His reply was in a sentence—"l have seen plenty of old fools iu my time, but this man beats them all." lock may today be saying this of the Kaiser. Julius Caesar is reputed to have ibeen as taciturn as Hannibal. Perhaps his most famous dispatch .-as a specimen"Veui, vidi, -vici." Equally sententious were Charlemagne, "William the Con. qneror, Bolivar, Tamerlane, Prince Eugene and Prince Rupert. We might ap. ply this test of. silence to two modern conquerors on land and sea, tho idols respectively of Englanu and America. Kitchener and Dowey both shine ns types of the wordless warrior. To each of them public speech is a painful ordeal—next door to a total impossibility. In the face of great emergencies each expresses his will in a few words of icy clearness. And each' achieves that which inspires tho talkative man to throw his hat in the air and yell. The commanders in the present war . havo wasted no words. Petain has done things, and talked little. Haig wastes no syllable. Allenby captured Palestine, and has not said of it as much as the Kaiser tipouls in a single burst of balderdash. Doers are not talkers, and talkers are not doers. Therein lies the difference between politicians and men of action. The politician talks, and talks mid talks, but irarely does anything. But the business man, the teacher, the soldier, tho sailor, the investigator act. They do things. If they only talked about doing things the world would be little better than a dead horse.