Gentlemen With Swords

New Zealand Listener, Volume 36, Issue 928, 24 May 1957, Page 12

Gentlemen With Swords

GALLANT GENTLEMEN, a Portrait of the British Officer, 1600-1956, by E. S. Turner; Michael Joseph, English price 18/-.

(Reviewed by

R. M.

Burdon

HE transition of the British officer from an amateur whose main qualifications were good birth and courage into a professional well versed in technical knowledge is the subject of this fascinating study. The process of evolution might have been more rapid had not Cromwell’s military dictatorship imbued the English people with a dislike of standing armies and professional soldiers that was to last for more than two centuries. After the Restoration the purchase of, commissions became an accepted institution that remained in existence until 1871. Gallant gentlemen, prepared to buy their rank, might be neglectful of their duties, but at least they were in every respect unlike Cromwell’s Major-Generals, and probably more reliable than men whose commissions had been gained through favouritism. Beau Brummell was given a cornetcy in the 10th Light Dragoons by the Prince of Wales, but resigned when his regiment was ordered, not to some unhealthy station abroad, but merely to Manchester! Although there was no purchase in the Navy, many a ship of war in Restoration days was commanded by some fine gentleman, ignorant of seamanship, who owed his position to influence at court. In the words of Macaulay, "the seamen were not gentlemen and the gentlemen were not seamen." But as time went on they borrowed each other’s attri-

butes until at length the naval officer came to fulfil both social and technical requirements, Duelling cost both services many valuable lives. The practice persisted long after it had begun to be officially discouraged, and what else could be expected when men of the highest rank continued to subscribe to the idea that wounded honour could only be satisfied by an exchange of pistol shots? In 1789, the Duke of York accepted the challenge of a subordinate officer. In 1829 the Duke of Wellington, at that time Prime Minister, fought a duel with the Earl of Winchilsea. Army reforms were the work of two "Liberal lawyers,’ Lords Cardwell and Haldane. The first abolished purchase; the second created a General Staff and a Territorial Force. The huge demand for additional officers created by World War I was supplied by the wholesale and indiscriminate granting of commissions. In World War II this lack of system no longer obtained, and to the astonishment of Colonel Blimp psychologists were called upon to assist War Office Boards in the task of selecting officers. How would "the Duke" have described such goings on? And what would he have said about the granting of commissions to women, even though the Army Act required them to observe the code of an officer and a gentleman! The British officer in all his (or her) variable forms has been the executive agent for conducting Britain’s armed conflict at home ‘and abroad. He has passed through many phases which throw light on his country’s social progress. His story has been told here with wit and erudition by an author whose happy capacity for combining historical fact with entertaining anecdote make Gallant Gentlemen a very easy book to read.