HOW WE CARRIED ON

Dominion, Volume 12, Issue 136, 4 March 1919, Page 4

HOW WE CARRIED ON

BRITISH A RACE OF ORGANISERS

A SILLY OBSESSION DESTROYED

(By Lieutenant C. D. Slelling). '.. Tile war should have—but probably hag not yet—dispelled a'very prevalent superstition that obsessed the British people in pre-war days, namely the obsession that the Germans could lick the world at organisation. Tho truth is that'the Germans, in default of any finer virtues, elevated intp the highest virtue of all the national characteristic of plodding industry— Titchtigkcit. The Germans were really magnificent self-advertisers and succeeded in enormously impressing tho world with this self-arrogated virtue, which to British minds has always ranked rather in the second class. The . "swot" at school was, with a very light instinct, rather despised, and certainly later experience in life always showed that the "swot" proved an inferior type of man; to the rather less plodding but more versatile bay who did not shrink from getting into occasional scrapes. Industry is _*.r invaluable quality, but it is not, as tho "Squareheads" liked to claim, one of the higher virtues. Nor is industry in, itself synonymous with organising ability. That is a bigger thing altogether, demanding two prime qualities; imagination and understanding of men. The machine-made German has never shone in either of these qualities. Britain, on the other hand, partly because she is a seafaring race and partly perhaps owing to her infusion of tho livelier Celtic blood, has always produced men in all ranks of life possessing both these qualities. Her system of higher education indeed, with all its superficial faults, has conduced to tho pioduction of men of individuality, enterprise, and imagination. Our past record in India and the dominions furnishes abundant proofs of this. Yet,' foj all that, there are thousands of persons in Great Britain who to the last maintained an absurd and*exaggerated respect for the German fetish of efficiency in organisation. They spoke, for instance, with bated breath, of the Ger- i mans' "phenomenal skill" in organising retreats. It is true 'that the retirement across the shell-swept Somme region in the spring of 1917 was carried out well, but it was a retirement executed Tinder comparatively easy conditions, and for sheer masterliness of organisation could, not compare to our own evacuation oi.' Gallipoli or tho retreat from lions, or the retreat of March-April last before a victorious and superior enemy. The truth is that the Germans had.used self-ad-vertisement in the same way as ancient tribes used monstrous figure-heads to terrify their enemies, and they succeed- . cd in making quite an undue impression on our own faint-hearts. Born Improvisers. In point of cold fact no people, during the tremendously exacting test imposed by war, lias shown more' magnificent powers of improvising organisation than tho' British. . . . Look at it from any angle you will and tho same proof appears. M'o improvised an army of 5,000,000, we improvised the whole vast national military machine, we improvised the fleet that defeated 'submarine warfare, we improvised the air force, we improvised the Machine-gun Corps, the Tank Corps, the motor transport and anti-gas organisation, the '■' anti-aircraft defences, and a hundred other vast activities, all in a relatively fc\v months w'hile the nation wan fighting for its life. In short wo improvised a notwork of organisations second to none and better than most in the world, which in every department beat the German organisations that had been' developed over a period of forty years. All theso great achievements were r.ot the work of a few exceptional men in supreme control. They wore tho work of a vast number of men, never previously tested, who showed themselves not only capablo-of fitting into the machine, devised from above, but also pre-eminent-ly capable of themselves orginatiiig lesser schemes of organisation. There was, for instance, to tako but one out of a thousand and one examples, tho retired naval officer-schoolmaster who organised his schoolboys weavers of wire netting for tho purposes of anti-submarine defence so effectively that they produced during the war I know not how many thousands of square miles of netting for this invaluable work. Or again, there was the dogbreeder who came forward and organised the whole' messenger-dog service of the British Army, and tho amateur pigeonfancior who performed a like service for the 'carrier pigeon service. But moro typical than any of these aro perhaps tho tens of thousands of subalterns in every branch of the Army's work who have been put to the proof and not found wanting. "Carry on" has been the main watchword of the British fighting services. It is'no-exaggeration to say that thoro has never been' a task which was 6e t to a British subaltern at which he has failed to "carpon" effectively. The discovery ot the war has been the amazing number ot educated Britons who could be trusted to administer almost anything' front a new tactical arm to a X.M.C.A. hut. Iho ■discovery of the war lias been that wa lire a raco of organisers. \.nd now! Is all this tremendous organising ability to bo wasted?. Are all these potential administrators to be a - lowed to fall back into a rut, in which they will never have tho least opportunity of exercising their ..powers for tho benefit of the community at large? Peaco hath her victories, her problems; her tasks no less renowned than war. Iho men who have run and won the war for us, from the highest to tho. lowest, must not' be lost to us in the thorny times that lie ahead. I am thinking, for instance, of my signalling 6ergeant,_ who five years ago was a clerk in an insurance •firm. Last April he commanded a battalion of the London Kegiment m the retreat. What is the State going to do with him? Ave we going to let him go back to his clerking, when we know that ho is a man to whom vm sately be entrusted the safety of a'battalion of men? There "are officers in staff positions who have proved again- and again their administrative ability, their grasp of facts, their understanding of men. Five years ago they were-what? Barrinters,' journalists, stockbrokers, clerks, tinkers, tailors. . • . Must theyjelapsa into their old unproductive ways? barely there is need on the coming peace for just such men as these. Somehow tlie nation must keep them.