Five Men

New Zealand Listener, Volume 6, Issue 134, 16 January 1942, Page 4

Five Men

T is a sobering thought, as we point out on page 7, that the fate of New Zealand for generations to come rests at present in the hands of five men. As far as anybody knows it rests safely there. Each of the five is a leader who has been proved under strain and difficulty. Each has captured the imagination of the public as weil as the confidence of his own men. Each has the kind of ability that supplements the abilities of all the others. Each has health, force, and drive. But in a narrower sense still our destiny is in the hands of one man, General Sir Archibald Wavell, the Commander-in-Chief, and the real question is, Does Sir Archibald rank with the world’s great Captains? If he does, the battle is already won. If he does not it is by no means lost, since leaders can be changed, and limitations in one commander are likely to be balanced by shortcomings in another. But victory then comes slowly. It has after all not often happened in history that armies have been led by men of equal genius on both sides, and it would be a sensation if that were the case now. We must suppose that our position is what. a nation’s position usually is in war-de-pendent on character and talent rather than on genius-and that relief will come to us not as the result of a scintillating series of victories that leave our enemies crushed and confused, but that it will follow a long series of attacks and withdrawals, with victories and defeats on both sides. And for that kind of warfare we can weigh Sir Archibald Wavell in his own scales. In three lectures on the art of generalship delivered in 1939 at Cambridge he laid it down that a good general must be human, or he will not inspire affection; must have moral and physical courage, or he will lack serenity in danger; must be young enough to be alert and open-minded; but above all must have common sense-knowledge of what is and what is not possible. Knowledge of the art of war is of course assumed in any soldier of senior rank, but it does not make a general. To use his knowledge for victory he must be able to anticipate the moves of war and in the meantime to take its shocks. These things Sir Archibald has shown that he can do, and if the question arises whether he must not, at 58, be losing some of his elasticity, it is at least half of the answer to recall that Marlborough won his most brilliant victory at 51, that Turenne’s best work er an at 63, and Moltke’s between 66 ;