Volunteer Generals

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In The Volunteer Journal this article was marked: “By the Author of ‘Essays Addressed to Volunteers’.” p. 479

There has been one thing wanting to the volunteer movement, and that is a fair and intelligent, but plain and outspoken criticism by competent outsiders. The volunteers have been to such a degree the pets of the public and the press, that such a criticism became an absolute impossibility. Nobody would have listened to it; everybody would have declared it unfair, ungenerous, untimely. The shortcomings of volunteer performances were almost invariably passed over in silence, while every corps was extolled to the skies for whatever it did go through tolerably well. The politeness of people, with any regard for impartiality, was most fearfully taxed; everywhere they had to give their opinion upon some volunteer affair or other, and unless they were prepared to utter the most fulsome and unqualified praise, they were lucky if they escaped being thought conceited snobs. How often have the volunteers been insulted by the stupid piece of flattery that they were fit to fight any troops in the world? How often have they been told that no division of the line could have done better what they did at Hyde Park, Edinburgh, Newton, or Knowsley?

Now, setting aside such absurd flattery, which at all times would have been ridiculous, we are quite prepared to admit that a fair trial had to be given to the volunteers before a fair opinion could be passed on their proficiency. But that time has passed long ago. If the volunteer movement, after nearly two years’ existence, cannot yet bear criticism, it will never be able to bear it. The great reviews of last summer, in our opinion, mark the period at which the movement passed from infancy into adolescence; by these reviews the volunteers themselves actually provoked criticism; and yet that criticism, with one or two exceptions, was not publicly exercised by those who ought to have done so.

The effects, as well of this absence of plain and outspoken criticism as of this unmitigated adulation, are now visible enough. There will be scarcely a single volunteer corps of eighteen months’ standing which does not consider itself, in the silence of its own conviction, quite as good as it has any business to be. The men, after having gone through the simplest battalion movements, through the routine work of skirmishing on a level piece of ground, and through a little rifle shooting, will be but too apt to say that they can do all these things as well as the line; and what the officers think of themselves has been shown by the race for promotion to captaincies, majorities, and lieutenant-colonelcies, which has been going on in almost every corps. Everybody considered himself perfectly fit for any commission he might be able to procure; and, as in the majority of cases, it was certainly not merit which made the man, we need not wonder that, in a good many instances, we have anything but the right man in the right place. Officers and men so firmly believed in what a benevolent press and public chose to call the perfection of their performances, that they began to think soldiering an uncommonly easy thing; and it is a wonder their own mushroom-perfection did not make them consider a standing army, composed of longtrained officers and soldiers, quite unnecessary in a country where perfect soldiers could be manufactured far easier on the volunteer plan.

The first distinct proof of the damage done to the movement by its friends in the press, was the sham fight last summer in London. Some enterprising colonels of volunteers thought the time had come to give their men a foretaste of what fighting looked like. Of course, the wiseacres among the regulars shook their heads, but that did not signify. These regulars bore an ill-will to the volunteer movement; they were envious of them; the success of the Hyde Park review almost made them go mad; they feared the sham fight would come off better than anything the line had ever done in that branch, &c. Had not the men gone through the manual and platoon, battalion drill, and skirmishing? And the officers, though mere civilians a short time ago, were they not now efficient captains, majors, and colonels? Why should they not lead a brigade or a division, as well as a battalion? Why should they not play a little at generals, having so well succeeded in the lower grades?

Thus did the sham fight come off, and a regular sham it was, according to all accounts. The thing was gone through with a supreme contempt for all accidents of ground, with a splendid disregard for the effects of fire, and with a perfectly ludicrous exaggeration of all the impossibilities which are inherent in every sham fight. The men learned nothing by it; they took home with them an idea of fighting totally the reverse of reality, an empty stomach, and tired legs: the latter two, perhaps, the only things which might be considered in any way useful to incipient warriors.

Such childishness was pardonable in the boyhood of the movement. But what shall we say to the return of similar attempts at this present time? Our indefatigable London self-made volunteer generals are at work again. Their own laurels of last summer do not let them rest. A mere sham fight on an ordinary scale no longer satisfies their ambition. This time a great decisive action is to be fought. An army of 20,000 volunteers will be thrown from London upon the south coast, will repel an invasion, and return to London the same evening, so as to be able to attend to business next morning.

All this, as the Times very properly observes, without any organisation, without staff, commissariat, land transport, regimental train—nay, without knapsacks, and without all those necessaries for campaigning which a line soldier carries in that receptacle! However, this is but one side of the question; it shows only one striking feature of the incredible self-confidence which our volunteer generals have the satisfaction of possessing. How the mere tactical knowledge, the art of handling the troops, is to be procured, the Times does not inquire. Yet this is quite as important a point. The drill of volunteers, so far, has been gone through on level ground only; but battle-fields generally are anything but level and unbroken, and it is just the taking advantage of this broken and undulating ground which forms the basis of all practical tactics, of the whole art of disposing troops in action. Now, this art, which has to be learned theoretically and practically, how are the volunteer generals, colonels, and captains to know it? Where have they been taught it? So little has this groundwork of practical tactics been attended to, that we do not know of a single corps which has been instructed, practically, in skirmishing in broken ground. What, then, can become of all such attempts at sham fights but a performance, which, satisfactory, perhaps, to ignorant spectators, will be most certainly useless to the men made to go through it, and which cannot but tend to make the volunteer movement look ridiculous in the eyes of military men assisting at such a spectacle.

To our astonishment, we find that even in practical Manchester an attempt is made to manufacture volunteer generals. No doubt we are not quite so advanced as our friends the Cockneys; we are not to have a sham fight, but a mere field-day of all the Manchester volunteers—something, it appears, in the style of the Newton review; and the affair is to come off on some comparatively level piece of ground. Now we wish it to be understood that, so far from disapproving this, we think, on the contrary, that halfa-dozen such field-days every year would do the Manchester volunteers a deal of good. We would add, that we should even consider it desirable that these field-days should come off in ground a little more broken, so as to allow the manoeuvres (against a supposed enemy) to come off with more variation, and to gradually give officers and men the habit of manoeuvring in broken ground.

Such manoeuvres would give the adjutants excellent opportunities for afterwards connecting with them, at officers’ drill, a few practical lectures on the mode of taking advantage of ground in fighting. So far, then, we not only approve of the plan, but should even wish to see it extended and regularised. But, then, we are informed by a paragraph, which appeared last Saturday in a local paper, that on this occasion the volunteers will do everything for themselves. That is to say, they are going to have a volunteer commander-in-chief, volunteer generals of brigade, and a volunteer staff. Here, then, we have the attempt to import into Manchester the London system of manufacturing volunteer generals, and to that we decidedly object. With all due respect to the commanding officers of regiments in Manchester, we say they have yet a great deal to learn before they become—and we make here no exception — fully efficient commanders of battalions; and if, before they have made themselves fully equal to the responsibility already undertaken by them, they aspire to act for a day in higher commands, we say that they do that which would be the greatest curse to the volunteer movement, namely, playing at soldiers, and that they degrade the movement.

At the head of their battalions they would be in their places, they would be able to look after their men, and they would learn something themselves. As Brummagem generals, they would be of no real use, neither to their men nor to themselves. All honour to the adjutants of our Manchester regiments, who deserve the greater part of the credit of having made their regiments what they are; but their place is with their respective regiments, where, as yet, they cannot be spared, while they would be of no real use to those regiments if they played, for a day, at adjutant, general, and brigade-major—a thing which surely would not give them, personally, any particular satisfaction.

When we have in Manchester the head-quarters of the northern division of the army, with a numerous and efficient staff—when we have an infantry and a cavalry regiment garrisoned here— surely there is no necessity of recurring to such extraordinary pranks. We think it would be both more conformable to military subordination, and also more in the interest of the volunteers themselves, not to collect in such numbers, under arms, without offering the command to the general of the district, and leaving to him the choice of appointing staff and line officers to the division and brigades. No doubt the volunteers would be met in the same friendly spirit as they have been on former occasions. They would then have men at the head of the division and brigades who understand their business, and can point out mistakes when they occur; and they would also preserve their own organisation unbroken. No doubt this would preclude colonels from acting as generals, majors as colonels, and captains as majors; but it would have the great advantage of keeping out of Manchester that manufacture of Brummagem generals for which London is now getting an unenviable notoriety.