Its I)iseases and Their Cure 

Ai Study ot 

The Personal Factor 

im Command 

Major-General 

f. F, C: Fuiler 

la.thxy l4ihxy service Pllblishtng co. 

?iadburg, Pa. 

Genedship 
Pirst Printing in the United Satea of Am&a 

March, 1936 

SERVICE bJRLttiHtNQ fh. 

WnRunBura, Pa. 

Princrd in u. s. A. 
OENERALSHIP 

‘FOE what art can surpass that of the 

general?-an art which deals not with 

dead matter but with living beings, who 

are subject to every impression of the 

moment, such as fear, precipitation, exhaustion-in short, to every human passion and excitement. The general has 

not only to reckon with unknown qnanti- 

{ 

ties, such as time, weather, accidents of 

all kinds, but he has before him one who 

ir seeks to disturb and frustrate his plans 

3-N and labours in every way; and at the 

*13 same time this man, upon whom a11 eyes 

<I are directed, feels upon his mind the 

weight of responsibility not only for the 

lives and bonour of hundreds of thousands, but even for the welfare and 

existence of his country.’ 

A. TON Bocws~~rns~r 

- 
GeneraMip in the Rrorld War - 11 

The Essentials ia Generalship - - 23 

Examples of the Personal Factor - 36 

The Diseases Diagnosed - - - - 62 

The Remedies Suggested - - - - 69 

Conclusion - - - - - - - - - 96 

Appendix : Tfie Ages of X00 Generals 97 

9 
PREFACE 

IN the summer of 1921 I was lunching at 

the Restaurant la Rue with the Deputy 

Chief of the French General staff when 

he told me the foIlowing story: 

At the battle of Waterloo, Colonel 

Clement, an infantry commander, fought 

with the most conspicuous bravery; but 

nnfartunately was shot through the head. 

Mapoleon, hearing of his gallantry and 

misfortune, gave instractions for him to 

be carried into a farm where Larrey tbe 

surgeon-general was operating. 

Oae glance convinced Larrey that his 

case was desperate, so taking np a saw he 

removed the top of his skull and placed 

his brains on the table. 

Just as he had finished, in rnshed an 

aide-de-camp, shouting : ‘It3 General 

Clement here?’ 

Clement, hearing him, sat up and exclaimed: ‘No! but CoEoneE Clement is.’ 

Qb, man g&&al, cried the aide-decamp, embracing him, ‘the Emperor was 

overwhelmed when we heard of your 

7 
PREFACE 

gallantry, and has promoted you on the 

deld of battle to the rank of Geueral,’ 

Clement rubbed his eyes, got, off the 

table, clapped the top of his skull on his 

head and was about to leave the farm, 

~ when Larrey shouted after him: ‘Non 

g8n&al--your brains !’ To which the 

gallant Frenchmnn, increasing his speed, 

shouted back: Vow that I am a general 

I ahall no louger require them!’ 

In this modest study my object is to 

prove, that though Clement wa9 wrong 

about brains, witllout his courage there 

can be no true generalship. 

J. B’. C. 5’. 
Generalship: Its Diseases 

and their Cure 

A Study of the Personal Factor in 

Command 

‘War with tmpateonal leaderslrlp la a brutal 

6orrl4estroyfnp; buslucss, provocative only of class 

anhoslt~ and bad workmansblp. Our senior otBeers must get back to sharing danger and .sacridce with their mm, horrever exalted tbefr rank, 

fast as 8allo~~ bffre ta do. Thnt used to be tke 

Brftlsb wag, but, ualorfnnatetg, there was a 

grlevons lapse from Et la the lnte war. 

GENEBbbSBW IN THE WORtD WAR 

THE quotation which heads this study is 

taken from an interesting and very hnman book--A G”Eance at Cfdlipoli, by 

Lie&.-Colonel C. 0. Read, ~.a., from 

which, later on, I shall quote again. The 

enggeation coetained in It. is worth tbinking over, especially 8~ to-day, when our 

army is faced by uncommon diffneulties, 

by radicrrl changes, by reactionary and 

reyolutionary Influences, and by problems which if not solved correctly may 

spell dir;aat.er. The pressure of international politics ia engendering the heat 

11 
OENEBAtSHlP :ITS DISEAlr3ES AND THEIB CuRlll 

af future wars: that of national insolvency-social disintegration and military 

decay; and above these the progress of 

industrialization is forcing mechanization to the fore, whilst Western civilization itself is daily beeoming more anstable and emotional. 

To-day, we soldiers are like men in a 

dark room groping blindly for the handle 

of the door, for the latch of the window. 

Nothing is seen clearly. We know that 

‘the war to end all wars’ is a myth; that 

Europe is in turmoil and Asia in travail. 

We know that wars will eome, as they 

always have come when these conditions 

prevailed, and yet we are asked to make 

bricks without straw and with precious 

little clay. 80 it happens that in the 

words of Isaiah: We grope for the wall 

like the blind, and we grope as if we had 

no eyes: we stnmble at noonday a8 in the 

night; we are in desolate places as dead 

men.” 

It ie beeanse so many men are morally 

dead that the times are so gloomy, a 

spirit of defeatism is abroad, and like a 

mist it magnifies every difficulty. What 

the world of to-day Is lacking in is eonr12 
GENEEAtX33’ : ITS DISEASES AND T&WEB CUBE 

age, the valour of leadership and the selfsacrifice of those in command. This, I 

think then, is the essence of the above 

quotation: Neither a nation nor an army 

is a mechanical contrivance, but a living 

thing, built clP fiesh and blood and not of 

iron and steel. Courage is its driving 

force; for, if human history be consulted, 

it will immediately be discovered that in 

the past all things worth while began 

their lives by some one man, or woman, 

daring to do what others feared to attempt. Fear has always ended in failure, 

and fear fs not a personal emotion only, 

but also the product of a m&B’s surroundEngs, the outcome of a system quite as 

much as the reaction of a danger. 

To-day, in the army we are faced with 

the problems of motorization and of 

mechanization, just as the navy was 

seventy-odd years ago. Borne think these 

changes good, and others bad; but their 

possible virtues and vices are insigniftcant problems if we lose sight of the 

greater problem which is this: TFEe mire 

mechanical became the weapons with 

which me fight, the less mecha&caE must 

be the spirit which cotttrds them. 

13 
CENEBALSHIP : p1’S DISEASE!3 AND THEIR CUBIP 

Sometime before the outbreak of the 

World War, quite uneonseiousIy, so it 

seems to me, the art of soldiership 

@Upped into a groove and became materiaIized. Mot increasing weapon-power 

alone, but the same factors which in industry have led to a separation, and, eonsequently, to a loss of sympathy, between 

employer and employed, have nlso, quite 

unseen, been at work in all modern 

armies from the year 1870 onwards. ICt 

was, k think, ever increasing size, with 

its concomitant complexity of control, 

which more than any factors created this 

change both in industrial and military 

organizations. The more management, 

or command, became methodized, the 

more dehumanized each grew; the worker, or the soldier, becoming a cog in a 

vast soulless machine was de-spiritualized, the gfamour of work, or of war, fading from before his eyes, until working, 

or fighting, became drudgery. Once, the 

soldier had seen those whom he obeyed, 

those who could order him to instant 

death; be had seen them standing beside 

him in the ranks, or not far in rear, faeing death with him. He had watched 

14 
BENEBALSXIP:I3CSDESEBSESANDTEIEIBCUBE 

Woife dying an the Heights of Abraham, 

Moore at Corunna, and Wellington rallying his squares at Quatrebras and Water- 

&m. Then, as in the last war, be saw 

them no longer; aow and again, perhaps, 

he heard of them far away, as managing 

directors sitting in-dug-outs, In chbteaux 

aud Iu of&es. Frequently, he did not 

know their names, To him they. were no 

more than ghosts who could terrify but 

who seldom materialized; hence’ battles 

degenerated @to subaltern-led conflicts, 

just as manufacturing bad degenerated 

into foreman-controlled work. The glitter and glamour was gone, the personal: 

factor was gone, the man was left without a master, witbout a true maater+Are 

general in flesb and blood, who could see, 

who could bear, who could watch, who 

could feel, who could swear and curse, 

praise and acclaim, and above all who 

risked his life with his men, and not 

merely issued orders mechanieall~ from 

some well-hidden headquarters mites and 

miles to the rear. 

CoXoneE Head speaks with force and 

understanding on this subject. Of Colonel Doughty Wylie, of Qaflipoli fame, 

16 
GENEIKALSRIP :ITS DISEASES AND THEIR CUBE 

he says: ‘He was killed, and was rewarded posthumously with the Victoria 

Cross, and rightly so, because his action 

was exceptional; but shau&& not 8~3 an 

example of leadership, not in it8 8ucce88, 

but in its undertaking, be normal rather 

than eaceptionall It might be asked why 

he deserved the V.C. more than any of 

his men? His business was to lead; theire 

to follow . . . .This was our old praeticeeven in the storming sieges of the Peninsula War, the generals in charge of the 

operations fought their way into the fortresses with their troops. Departure from 

this practice had led to unduly prolonged 

spasms of futile ffghting, to great and 

unnecessary waste of precious life, and 

to a separation in spirit and sympathy 

of the generals and statf from the rest 

of the army. A sense of equality of sacrifices is an essential cement in a fighting 

force.” 

Tn France, as in GaIlipoE, and from all 

accounts in every theatre of the World 

War, a blight fell upon generalship, 

Colonel Eead quotes as an example the 

*A Olance at Gallipolf, Ltent-Colonel C. 0. 

Head, p, 87 (1931). The italks are mine. 

16 
GICNERALSI3IP :ITS DISEASES AND TRElB CUBE 

landing at 8uvla Bay. The generaI&- 

chief having issued his plans, 90 obligation rested on him to superintend the 

wor.k of his subordinates, apportion the 

tasks requiring discharge to those who 

had proved their special capacity for 

them, or to see that his plans were executed in accordance with his design and 

intention! Xo, his part was done; now he 

bad only to wait in dignified seclusion on 

the island of Tmbros for news of the recult of his complicated plans and orders! 

Elhades of Wel’iington, Wolseley and 

Roberts, how, looking down from the 

Olympian heights, they mast have wished 

they could interpose to exert their authority and illume the situation with the 

free spirit of war!” 

Paschenddele was much the aante, and 

though uo one in his senses would have 

expected the general-in-chief, or his snbordinate army commanders, to lead their 

men over those desolate shel!-blasted 

swamps, very little was done outside formulating a plan to fight an offensive 

battle in a most dii%cnlt defensive. area, 

with the result that soon after this battle 

‘ibid. p. 144. 

17 
GIIENLEBAtBHfP:~D1SEASESANDTEElRCUBE 

was Iaunched, on JuIy 3194 1917, all contact between the half-drowned front and 

the wholly dry rear was lost. This bideoua turmoil will go down to history as 

the meet soulless battle fought in the 

annals of the British Army. 

Worse was to c0me from tbe point of 

view of generalship. The army having 

been bled wblte and gutted at Ypres was, 

in Ma&h, the following year, thrown 

back in confusion by the Germans, aad 

what da we eee? Directly the British 

front fs broken, the generals and their 

et.affe pack up. As the enemy advances 

there is much buzzing on the telephone 

wires ; tben the army headquarters go 

back so maay miles, corps headquarters 

80 many, divisional headquarters so 

many, and so orql day after day, dragging 

the front back with them, the tail af 

which is covered &y weary rearguards of 

enbaIterns and private soldiers. What 

says the shade of Marshal Ney to thisI wonder? 

Is this an exaggeration? Well, I for 

one watched it, and it was the sorry picture wbicb I saw: au army sliding baekwards downhill, beeause, with one excep18 
OENERALSEIIP : ITS BISEASES AND THEEB CORE 

ti0n onXy, 80 I believe, no one of the 

higher commanders &ought-it was no 

question of daring, for these men were 

not cowards--of rushing forward and 

kicking a moral stone under the backward skidding wheels. The exception I 

witnessed myself, a ditiaioaat commander in tbe picket fine with his men and 

everyone confident and smiling, He was 

doing nothing outside showing himself, 

yet his presence acted Iike a charm-it 

m.aintained confidence. He was a -man 

wha knew the value of moral cement. 

It is indeed pleasant in the drab d&lmess Of this war to look back on an incident such as this. It ia even endouraging 

to learn that whilst the B.&i& commander-in-chief’ Tag .&ill in Embros, ‘At 

the first Anzac landing, Muotapba Kemal, 

the Turkish commander, rushed ahead of 

the mafn body of his troops up the slopes 

af Bari Bair to see for himself tbe extent 

and direction of his enemy’s move from 

the landing place,) and that ‘At the Anzac 

I!khe Btltlsh Cammnnd~t-tn-Chtef rt Qn~.llipolI 

was not at Imbros nt the time of the fir& Anznc 

landlag, but on bonrd Queen RtkaDeth, wboee big 

guns were supportlng the Xaffdlog. 
~~NERAIiSHIP :ITS DISEASES AN5 THEIR CURE 

August attack, the German General Kannengiesser, commanding the section similarly rushed up Chanuk Bair ahead of 

the reserve troops. He got a bullet from 

a Gurkha machine-gnn through his shoulder, but was able to allot the required 

positions to his t,roops before he was earried away. And Liman von Sanders 

himself, the G-in-C., on the same day 

dashed forward to the Annfarta Ridge, 

and posted there, -personkily, the few 

troops be had arailable for defence.” It 

is pleasant to record these actions, in 

spite of the fact. that they are to the 

credit of our enemy, not anly because 

gallantry is the common heritage of 801. 

diera, but because they show that generalship was not quite dead. 

In the War, X know only of one corps 

in which in spirit generalship and system 

of etafl work antedated the 1870 epoch, 

and that was the British Tank Corps; a 

corps commanded and staffed by young 

men, for on the headquarter staff the oldest was under forty. No other corps, so 

far as I am aware, ever experienced the 

pride of being led into batt.le by its gen- 

‘Ibid. p. 146. 

!a 
OENEBALSEIP : ITS DXSEASES AND TEZEKR CUBE, 

eral, as Major-General Elles led the van 

of his tanks at the battle of Cambrai. No 

other corps, and of this I am certain, so 

persistently sent its general staff officer8 

to the front when battle was engaged. At 

Arras, at Ypres, at Cambrai and at 

Amiens, they went forward to the battleBeEd, and some not far from the leading 

tanks. During the earlier part of our 

disastrous defeat in March, 19lS, all went 

forward, and many of the administrative 

staff as well. Ln tbis particular battle, 

the Second Battle of the Somme, I was 

convinced by personal observation CID the 

spot, that had other corps acted as the 

Tank Corps acted, that is to say had their 

generals and their staffs gone forwards 

in place of backwards, the enemy could 

have been halted on the Somme in place 

of being allowed to approach to within 

cannon-shot of Amiens. One thing is, 

however, certain, and much of this Aghting in France proved it over and over 

again, namely, that the most rapid way 

ta shell-shock au army is to shell-proof 

its generais; for once the heart of an 

army is severed from its head the result 

is paralysis. The modern system of com21 
OENERALSRIP :ITS DISEASES AND THEKE CURE 

mand has in fact guillatined generalship, 

hence modern bnttlea have degenerated 

into aaurian writhings between headless 

monsters. 

22 
THE ESSENTLAL.9 IN GENERALSITU’ 

‘THE moral i8 to the physical as three 

to one,’ is a catch phrase which parrotwise has been repeated a million times, 

and yet few soldiers pay any attention to 

what morality in war really mean&. 

Above ail things it means heroism, for 

heroism is the soul of leadership, whether 

a man is leading himself by placing 

his convietioue before his interests, or 

whether he is risking his life to save the 

lives of his comrades, or to help win the 

cause his country is fighting for. Roth 

forms are essent.ial in generalship, for 

until a man learna how to command himself it is unlikely that his command over 

others will prove a profitable GusineRs. 

War is, or anyhow should be, an heroic 

undertakiag; for without heroism it can 

be no more than an animal conflict, which 

in place of raising man through an ideal, 

debases him through brutality. 

Many years ago now this was pointed 

out by John Ruskin in his lecture on 

War which he gave at the Royal Military 

23 
GENERALSHIP FITS DXSEASES AND TEIEIR CURE 

Academy, Woolwich, in 1865,’ t.he year 

the Civil War in America ended. 1 intend to quote freely from this lecture, 

probably tbe most noted ever delivered at 

the Royal Academy, and certainly one 

which we should study to-day. I* intend 

to do so, because Ruskin gets down to the 

heart af this subject, sfrowing that if war 

is bereft of the personal factor in command, it cannot but degenerate into a 

soulless conflict in which the worst and 

not the best in man will emerge. 

An artist and a lover of peace, he said 

to his youthful audience: 

‘You may imagine that your work is 

whoIIy foreign to, and separate from 

mine. 60 far from that, all the pure and 

nobIe arts of peace are founded on war; 

no great art ever yet rose on eart,h, but 

among a nation of soldiers. There is DO 

art among a shepherd people, if it remain5 at peace. There is no art among 

an agricultura1 people, if it remains at 

peace. Commerce is barely consistent 

with fine art; but cannot produce it. 

Maaufact,ure not only is unable to pro- 

‘The Crown uf Wild Oliccs, John Ruakln, 1900 

@dltiOll. 

24 
duce it, but invariably destroys whatever 

seeds of it exist. There is no great art 

possible to a nation but that which ie 

based on battie.’ 

To Ruskin war ‘is the foundation of 

all the arts,’ because ‘it ie the foundation 

of all tbe high virtues and faculties of 

men’; then be says: 

‘It is very strange to me to discover 

this; and very dreadful-but I saw it to 

be quite an undeniable fact. The common 

notion that peace and the virtues of civil 

life flourished together, I found to be 

wholly untenable. Peace and the &es 

of cfvil life only fionrish together. We 

talk of peace and learning, and of pe~ee 

and plenty, and of peace and civilization ; 

but I found that those were not the words 

which the Muse of History coupled together: that, on her lips, the words were 

-peace, and sensuality-peace, and selfishness-peace, and death. I found, in 

brief, tbat al1 great nations learned tbe 

truth of word, and strengt”h of thought, 

in war; that they were nourished in war, 

and wasted by peace; taught by war, and 

deceived by peace; trained by war, and 

26 
OENERALSRIP : LTS DISEASES AND TElEIE CURE 

betrayed by peace; in a word, that they 

were born in war, and expired in peace.’ 

But what type of war does Ruskin 

refer to? Not ‘the rage of a barbarian 

wolf-flock’, not wars hegotten by bankers, 

squabbling merchants or jealous politicians, but wara of self-defence. ‘To such 

war as this’, be says, ‘all men are born; 

in such war as this any man may happily 

die; and out of such war as this have 

arisen throughout the extent of past agesJ 

all the highest sanctities and virtues of 

humanit,y.’ Then turning t.owards his 

audience he said: 

‘If you, the gent.Iemen of this or any 

other kingdom, chose to make your pastime of contest, do so, and welcome; but , 

set not up . . . unhappy peasant pieces 

upon the chequer of forest and field. If 

the wager is to be of death, lay it on your 

own heads, not theirs. A goodiy struggle 

in the Ol~tupic dust, though it be the dust 

of the gratve, the gods wilI look upon, and 

be with you in; but ‘they wil1 not be with 

you, if you sit on the sides of the am@litheatre, whose steps are the mountains 

of earth, whose arena its ralIeya, to urge 

26 
OENEBALSRIP :ITS DISEASES AND TEIEIX CURE 

your peasant millions into gladiatorial 

war.’ 

And further on: 

‘First, the great justification of this 

game is that it truly, when well played, 

determines ~9~2 is the best me+--who is 

the higheat #red, the most self-denying, 

the most fearless, t,he coolest of nerve, 

the swiftest of eye and hand. You cannot test their qualities wholly, unless 

there is a clear possibility of the 

struggle’s ending Sn death. It is only ia 

the fronting of that eondition that the 

full trial of the man, soul and body, 

comes out. You may go to your game of 

wickets, or of hurdles, or of cards, and 

any knavery t.hat is in you may stay unchallenged all the while. But if the ploy 

may he ended at any moment by a Iauce 

thrust, a man will probably make up his 

accounts a little before he enters it. 

Whatever is rotten and evil in him will 

weaken his hand more in holding a swordhiIt than in baliancing a billiard cue; 

and on the whole, the habit nf living 

lightly hearted, in daily pre 

death, always baa had, and u 

27 
t3ENEBALSBP :ITS DISEASES AND THEIB CWBE 

power both in the making and testing of 

honest men.’ 

These two quotations contain within 

them the essence of true generakhip, 

The true general is not a mere prompter 

in the wings of the stage of war, but a 

participant in its mighty drama, the value 

of whose art cannot be tested ‘unless 

there is a clear possibility of the struggle 

ending in death’. If he will not, or it 

the system of command prohibits him 

fram experiencing this danger, though be 

may feel for his men, his men cannot possibly fee! for him as they would were he 

sharing danger with them. Morally the 

bat.tle will be thrown out of tune, because 

Death is the bandmaster of War, and 

unless all, general to drummer boy, follow 

the beat of his baton, harmony must 

eventually give way to discord. On the 

modern battlefield Death beats one tune 

to the soldier, and frequently the modern 

general, out of sight of his baton, beats 

another. No single one of the great warriors of past ages hns dared to be so 

presumptuous. 

Courage is the pivotal moral virtue in 

28 
~BiNEBAT23HI.P :ITS DISEASES AND TEIEIB CUBI 

the system of war expounded by CIausewitz. He writes: “Primarily the element 

in which the operations of war are carried on is danger; but which of all the 

moral qualities is the first In danger? 

Courage,’ * And again: War is the province of daager, and therefore courage 

above all things is the first quality of a 

warrior.” And yet again: ‘As danger 

is the general eIement in which everything moves in war, it is also chiefly by 

courage, the feeling of one’s own power, 

that the judgment is differently influenced. It is to a certain extent the 

crystalline lens through which all appearances pass before reaching the understanding.” 

ShouXd the genera1 consistently live 

outside the rearm of danger, then, though 

he may show high moral courage in making decisions, by his never being called 

upon to breathe the atmosphere of danger 

his men are breathing, this lens will become blurred, and he will seldom experienee the moral influences his men are 

1 an. War, Karl van Clauaewltc, EUgliSh edlth 

vol. 1. p. 20 (1908). 

‘Ibid. vol. I. p. 4’1. 

‘lMd. rol. f p. X01. 

29 
QENP,IIA~E[LP:~~DI~EA~ESANDTREIRCUBE 

experieucing. But it is the iutluence of 

his cournge upon the hearts of his men 

in which the main deficit w-ill exist. It 

is hi8 personality ‘which will sufler--his 

prestige. 

‘The personality of the gtnernl is indispensabEe, said Napoleon ; ‘he is the head, 

he is the all, of an army. The Gauls were 

not conquered by the Roman legions, but 

by Caesar. It was not before the Carthnginian soldiers t.hat Rome was made 

to tremble, but. before ffaunibal. ft was 

not t,he Macedonian phalanx which penetrated to India, but Alexnnder. It waB 

not the French Army which reached the 

Weser and the Inn, it was Turenne. 

Prussia was not defended for seven years 

against the three most formidable European Powers by tbe Prussian soldiers, 

hut by Frederick the Grerrt.” In a similar strain Robert Jackson writes : ‘Of the 

conquerors and emiuent military. characfers who haye at different times astonished the worid, Atexander the Great and 

CharFes the Twelfth of Sweden are two 

of the most singular; the Jatter of Fthom 

* ,8femotrn Cct-lfs d Bafnte-Bethe, RkmthoIon, 

vol. !I, p. 90 (1MZ). 

30 
OENEBALSHXlP : XT9 DISEASES AND THEIR CURE 

wan the most heroic and most extraordinary man of whom history has left any 

record. An army which had Alexander 

OP Charles in its eye was difl’erent from 

itself in its simple nature, it imbibed a 

share of their spirit, became insensible of 

danger, and heroic in the extreme.‘” 

Bo we see that without the personal 

contact of the commander with his men, 

whether of a subordinate general or of 

the general-in-chief, such enthusiasm eannot be roused and such heroism cannot be 

created, for as Thomas Carlyle says: 

heroism is “the divine relation. . . which in 

all times unites a Great Nan to other 

men.’ 

There are yet other factors besides 

those which appertain to the heart. Marshal @axe realizes this when he says: 

Though “the first quality a general should 

possess is courage, without which all 

others are of little value; the second is 

brains, and the third good health.” ‘He 

must be as active in mind as in body,‘8 

: A &mfematic Vfeto of the Pormnfion. Dfsciptlne an& Ecottom~ of krmier, Rabert Jackson, 

pp. !m-218 (S804~. 

*Me8 Rheties, Marshal 8axe (1757). 

* CEwres Mtlftafree, Prince de Ligne (1800). 

31 
GENEEAWHIX” :lTS DISEASES AND TIIEIB CTJRE 

says the Prince de Ligne. Mind and 

bod7, let us see what the great soldiers 

have said about tbese. 

Baron van der Goltz writes: ‘One of 

the most importaut t.alents of a general 

we would call that of a “creative mind”; 

because to term it “inventive faculty” 

appears to us too shallow.’ Originality, 

not conventionality, is one of the main 

pillars of generalship. To do something 

that the enemy does not expect, is not 

prepared for, something wbicb will surprise him and disarm him morally. To 

be always thinking abend and to be 

always peeping round corners. TQ WY 

out the Saul of one’s adversary, and to act 

in a manner which will astonish and bewilder him, this is generalship. To render the enemy’s general ridiculous in tbe 

eyes of his men, this is the foundation of 

success. And what is the dryrot of generalship? The Archduke Albert puts his 

finger on it wben be says: 

‘There are plent~y of smaII-minded men 

who, in time of peace, excel in detail, are 

inexorable in matters of equipment and 

drill, and perpetually interfere with the 

work of their subordinates. 

32 
QENERALSHKP :ITS DXSEASES AND THEIR CUBE 

‘They thus acquire an unmerited reputation, and render the service a burden, 

but they above all do mischief in preventing development of individuality, and in 

retarding the advancement of independent and capable spirits. 

When war arises the small minds, 

worn out by attention to trifles, are incapable of effort, and fail miserably. So 

goes the world.” 

Frederick the Great, as may be expected, is more sarcastic. Before a gathering of generals he snid : 

‘The great mistake in inspections is 

that you ofXcers amuse yourselves with 

God knows what buffooneries and never 

dream in the least of serious service. 

This ia a source of stupidity which would 

become most dangerous in ease of a serious conflict. Take shoemakers and 

tailors and make generals of them and 

they will not commit worse follies!?” 

What does this meticulous-mindedness 

s Ler MtthQdea de la Uuemc, Pierron (1889- 

1SQS). 

‘Quoted from Baliia Btudica. Ardant de pt~% 

American Edltlnn. p. 10 (192ll. 

33 
CENEBALSIIIP :ITS DISEASES AND TREIU CURE 

Eead to? Marshal &axe gives us the answer, saying : 

‘Many Generals in the day of battle 

busy themselves in reguIating the marching of their troops, in hurrying aidea-decamp to and fro, in galloping about incessn5 tly. They wish to do everything, 

and a8 a result do notbiog. 

‘Xf he wishes to be a sergeant-major 

and be everywftere, he acts like the fly 

in tbc fable who thought that it was he 

who made the coach move. 

‘How does this bappen? It is because 

few men understand war in its larger 

aspeets. Their past life has been occupied in drilling troops, and they are apt 

to beIiere that this alone constitutes the 

art of war.” 

Finally we come to the third factor, 

physical fitness, a factor wbicb can more 

easily be cultivated and controlled, for 

whilst, should he lack them, it is impossible to endow a general with courage 

and intelligence, it is possible to pick fit 

men and gonng men who are likely to 

remain fit for command. Baron von der 

L Yes Rdcerles, lforshal Saxe (1787). 

34 
GENEBALSHLJ.? : ITS DISEASES AND THEIR CUBE 

Go1 tz Rag-8 : ‘Good health and a robust 

constitution are inraluable to a general. 

. l . In a sick body, the mind cannot 

poesibly remain permanently fresh aad 

dear. It is stunted by the selfish body 

from the great things to which it should 

be entirely devoted.” 

These, then, ‘are the three pillars of 

generalship--courage, creatire intelligence and physical fitness; the attributes 

of youth rather than of middle age. 

*The. Nalbon fn drm8, Colmar TOD der Go&z, 

ElYl&f$h EdiltfOD, p. 75 (1006). 

35 
EXAMPLES OF Tl3:E PERSONAL FAClYOR 

IH this study of generalship I will now 

turn from theory to history, and will 

show that though most of the theory I 

have quoted is drawn from that epoch 

of war whieh preceded the industriatization of military power, that is the changeover from the simple hand-made weapons 

still used during the Napoleonic Wars to 

the more complex and powerful weapons 

which folIowed the introduction of steam 

power, it is in no way incompatible with 

the needs of the present nge. This theory 

is absolutely sound for all types of war, 

whether shock or missile weapons predominate, or whether missile weapons 

are of short or bmg range, are dew to 

fire or rapid to load. 

To prove this, which is simultaneously 

to disprove the quite modern impersonal 

theory of command, I will first aelect a 

few examples of leadership taken from 

British history, in order to show that 

with ua moral leadership was once a 

marked characteristic of our generalship. 

Next, I will turn to the American Civil 

36 
War, the last of the great conflicts to be 

waged before impersonal command was 

reduced to a science. 

Though this war may seem remote 

when compared to the World War, it was 

& war full of extraordinnrg and novel 

dangers. The Mini6 rifle then used was 

as superior to the old flintlock musket 

of Napoleonic times as the magazine rifle 

of the last decade of the nineteenth century was superior to it; yet 8s we shall 

see the dangers it created in no WRY compelled the American gene&s, most of 

whom were of Anglo-Saxon blood, to 

emulate that Wibertinn hero, the Duke 

of Plaza-Toro, who led his army from 

behind ! 

Tn the good old days of the mid-nineteenth century, though our fox-hunting 

generals may not have been too intelligent, and were in most cases totally ignorant of the art of war, DO one would 

dream of suggesting that they were Iacking in courage. In spite of weapon improvement the courage of our senior off% 

cem was as it had been in the days of 

Wellington and before. In 1793, in the 

assault of the 14th Foot on the fortified 

37 

-- 
GENERALSfEIP : XTS DISEASES AND THEER i=URE 

camp of Famars in Flanders, The 

French attack was.so fierce that the regiment wavered for a minute, when Colonel 

Doyle, drPshing to the front, shouted in 8 

loud voice, Wome along my lads, I’&% 

brenk these scoundrels to their own 

d--d tune; drummers, strike up 

‘Ca ira’.” ‘* Whd WLS the result? The 

French were swept over the ridge! 

In November, 1854, we see the same 

thing. When at Znkernmn the great 

Russiau trunk column adrnnced up the 

Home Ridge, what did Colonel ‘Daubeney 

do? Placing himself at the head of thirty 

men of the 55th Regiment, he charged his 

mrmsed enemy and cut his wny right 

through him. 

Like Doyle, Daubenq was only a 

CotoneI, but whatt of the British Commander-in-Chief, where was he? At the 

very moment that. Daubeney charged, <ex-. 

posed to the full blrrst of’ the Russian We 

stood Rsglnn and his staff. . . . Through 

all this Raglan snt perfectly unperturbedJ2 

*A Hundred Fcnrr of Gronfifct, Colonel Arthur 

Doyle, p. 54 (1911). 

‘A Rfatory of the Rriffxk Army, Rbn. J. W. Fortefxoe, vol. xlli, p. 129 (1030). 

38 
C?ENEBALSRXP :ITS DISEASES AND TRFXR CIJJHJ 

In our next war, again look at our 

Commander-in.ChieP, this time at the 

battle of Cawnpore on December 6th, 

1857: ‘Bir Colin, a fine old soldier as he 

was, riding in front with his helmet off, 

cheering on his panting troops’. Then 

look at him in bivouac: ‘I could not help 

admiring the toughness of old Sir Colin, 

who rolled himself up in a blanket, lay 

down, to sleep in a hole in a field, and 

seemed to enjoy it.” 

Lastly step forward orer forty years, 

to within fifteen years of the World War. 

At Magersfontein, where did General 

Wauchope fall? He fell with his orderly 

otncer and the oPncer commanding the 

leading battalion 150 rards from the 

Boer trenches. 

It may be said, what~ wus the good of 

such bravery? (I believe I am right in 

saying that eight British generals fell at 

Inkcrman; nor were the French behindhaad in this respect, for, at the storming 

of the Halakoff, on June 18th, 1855, they 

had Are generals killed and General hfacmahon was one of the flrst to mount the 

*ReoolEectlons of (I Mflilary L(fc, Oenerat Sir 

3oho Adge, pp, 144-145 (18%X5). 
GENERbLSFUl’ : ITS DISEASES AND TFIErR CURE 

warp.) The answer to this question is 

given by Fortescue: at Inkerman, he 

says, the moral ascendancy of the British 

was astonishing : ‘They met every attack 

virtually with a counter-offensive, and 

hesitated not to encounter any numbers 

whether with bullet, bayonet or butt. 

There never was a fight in which small 

parties of stores, tens, and even individuals, showed greater audacity or achieved 

more surprising remIts. They never lost 

heart nor, by all accounts, cheerfulness. 

The enemy mfgbt be in front, flanks OF 

rear, 01: .%t all three points together: it 

mattered not. They flew at them quite 

undismayed and bored their way out. 

. . . Never hare the fighting qunlities of 

the British soldier been seen to greater 

advantage than at Inkerman. But it was 

wrong to call Tnkerman, au it was styled, 

a soldier’s battle. It was a regimental 

afReer’s battle, and to the regimental 

off&r belongs the credit.‘” 

But MI the question remains: Would 

the regimental aflicers have behaved as 

they did behave had the generals been 

ad Hf&ry of the Brttfxk drmy. Ron. 3. W. Forteeem, oat. xtfl, pp. 137-K@ (lB30). 

40 
OENEBALSXIP : ITS DISEA9ES AND TnEIB CURE 

Plaza Tore.ing it in rear? Rad they been 

on their ships at Balaclava, would 

Fwtescue ever have been able to write 

these glowing words? 1 doubt it. 

Again, it may be said that the Crimean 

War wag one thing and the World War 

another. True; but did the Plaza Toro-ing 

during the World War help on our batties? I doubt it more and more each 

tEme I exam&e these dreary, 8oul’fest+ 

mechanical eurgings. We think that generals sitting in dug-outs did help on these 

battles; my own opinion is that in most 

eases, and there are exceptions to every 

rule, they had uo more influence on them 

than had they been lying in their g-ravee. 

To turn now to the American Civil 

War, the last of the old heroic ware, 

nevertheless the first of the great modern 

war&, for it was the Arst exteneive eonf&t in which the infiuenees of eteam 

power in aI1 ita many forms were felt. It 

fa true that several of them made themeelves felt during the Ctimean War and 

Napoleon III’s Italian War of 1859; but 

the first of these wara wa8 mainly a siege 

operation, and the second too restricted 

4l 
GENERALSLfLF : IT’S B)ISEASES AND THEnt CuREll 

a struggle to be looked upon as the birth 

of the modern epoch. 

In the American Civil War the mnzzleloading percussion-capped rifle dominated every field. It had an eflective 

range of 600 yards compared to the ffintlock’s 100, and a maximum range of 

about a mile; wbitst the rifled IQ-pounder 

and 20-pounder guus had, respectively, 

ranges of 6,200 and 4,500 yards, compared to the Napoleonic 12-pounders9 

1,SQO. In this war, magazine breecbload&g rifies were invented and used, 

more particularly by the Federal cavalry, 

88 well as bombs, grenades, and several 

other projectiles; gas-shells were considered and also flame projectors; armonred 

ships and armoured trains were employed, and in the iatt,er stages of the 

War the Aeld telegraph was seen on every 

battlefield. Pet, in spite of all these and 

many other inventions, only rivalled by 

those of the World War, generalship remained of a high order. Probably no 

war in the whole of military history prodnced aucb a gala- of generals. In this 

war, the first of the modern wars, vastly 

increased weapon power in no way gave 

42 
a lie to the old theory of generalship, 

undoubtedly it modified it, but it in no 

way effaced it-the personal factor remained eupreme. 

To examfae two cases only, namely, the 

generalship of Grant nnd Lee, for a hundred others could be cited, both these 

soldiers relied upon the personal factor 

and had one thing in common-their 

scare of danger. In his first battle at 

Befmont, 8 emnll affair, Grant 8s a &rat.- 

egist or tactician ~8s nonexistent; still. 

he is the general, the true leader, for he 

is the last nt811 to leave the Belid, risking 

his Life to see that none of his men have 

been left behind. At Fort Donelson, he 

was not on the battIefieId when his army 

was attacked, and upon returning to it, 

he found it half-routed; how did he act? 

Qeneral Lewis Wallace, one of his subordinate commanders and the author of 

that stirring romance, Ben Bur, ~aye: 

‘Xn every great m&n’s career there is a 

crisis exactly similar to that which now 

overtook General Grant, and it cannot be 

better described than as a crucial test of 

his nature. A mediocre person wonld 
QEEFEBALSEII?? : ITS DISEASES AND TIIELB CURE 

have accepted the news as an argument 

for persistence in his resoIution to enter 

upon a siege. Had General Grant done 

so, it is very probable his history would 

have been then and there cancluded. EIis 

admirers and detractors are alike invited 

to studg him at this precise juneture. It 

cannot be doubted that be saw with p&infuE distinctness the eflece of the disrtster 

to his right wing. His face flusbed 

slightly. With a sadden grip he crushed 

the papers in his hand. But in au instant these signs of disappointment or 

hesitation-as Lhe reader pleasescleared away. In his ordinary quiet 

voice he said, addressing himself to both 

ofthers QMcCIernand and Lewis Wa’tlace), “Oentlcmen, the position on the 

right must be retnken” *. *I1 

What did he t.hen do? Did he sit down 

and write nn oprratiop order? No! He 

galfoped down the line shouting to his 

men : ‘FilE yaw cartridge boxes quick, 

and get into line; the encmy is trying to 

escape, and he must not be permitted to 

do so. . . .’ This’, 8s he says himself, 

~Rattlcs and Lenderr of tke Oivtl IFor, vol. i, 

p. 422 (1884-88). 

44 
QENERALSIIlF :F’i’S L-WEARES AND THESIt CUBE 

‘acted like a charm. The men only 

wanted someone to give them a command.” It was his presence and selfcontrol which established order. The 

presence of the general-in-chief, in the 

face of danger, at once creates confidence, 

for his personality is fused into the impersonal crowd, and the higher his selfcontrol the higher does this confidence 

grow, it magnetizes his men and morally 

te-unifies them. No operation order 

could hare accomplished tfiis, and without this change in moral feeling, which 

the personality of the generaI-in-chief 

could alone effect, no operation order 

would have been of much use. 

At the opening of the battle of Sbiloh, 

Orant was faced by a similar though still 

more desperate situation, and one more 

difbcult for him personally, for having 

injured his leg a day or two before he 

hahbied off the boat at Pittsburgh, Ianding on crutches. Met by 6,000 panicstricken stragglers and every possible 

rupour of disaster, what does he do? He 

mounts his horse and galEops towards the 

1 Pcrronal Ilfemoir8, Ul~eses EC Chant, ~01. I+ pp. 

807308 ( u385). 

45 
GENEBALSHW : ITS DISEASES AND TlB!XR CURE 

battle front, and is here, there and ererywhere. Ilis persona1it.y at once seizes 

upon his men and morally shakes them 

out of chaos into order. Once again the 

general-in-chief wins the battle with that 

supreme weapon-the persona1 factor. 

It ia always the same with this great 

man, or any other great soldier. At the 

opening of the Wilderness Campaign, as 

usuai, his headquarters were pitched 

close to the battle front.. During tbe 

fighting on Nay 6th, 1864, the Federal 

line was driven back and a panic resulted, in which an excited officer rushed 

up to where Grant was sitting and 

shouted ; ‘Qeneral, wouldu’t it be prudent 

to move headquart,ers to the ot,her side 

of the Germanna road?’ To which eatie 

the answer: ‘It strikes me it would be 

better to. orders np some artillery and defeud the present location.’ I 

With Qraut, there was DO turning 

away from danger, he alwars faced it. 

On another occasion, when Fort Ifarrisen was captured, on Se@t.ember. 29th, 

1864, as usual Grant was well forward 

* Cnmpalp&7 7&h @-ant, General EIorece 

Porter, p. 60 (1807). 

46 
QENEBhLSlfXP:ITS E)ISEASES AND THEIR CUUE 

and came under heavy Ore, one shell 

bursting immediately over him as he was 

writing a dispatch, ‘The handwriting of 

the dispatch when finished’, writes one of 

his staff &leers> ‘did not bear the slightest evidence of the uncomfortable circumstances under which it was indited.” On 

yet another occasion when supervising an 

attack, he dismounted and sat down on a 

fallen tree to write a me&age. CV(‘hile 

thus engaged a shell exploded directly in 

front of him. He looked up from his 

paper an instant, and then, without the 

slightest change of countenance, went on 

writing the message. Some of the Fifth 

Wisconsin wounded were being carried 

past him at the time, and Major E. R. 

Jones of that regiment says . . . that one 

of his men made the remark: 9Aysses 

don’t scare worth a d-n. ” ‘1 It is such 

generals who can lead men, who cau win 

victories and not merety machine them 

out. 

With his great opponent, Robert IL 

Lee, it is the same. It was his personafity, his example, his close contact with A- 

‘ibid. p. 3CC. 

‘Rtid. gyp. W-97. 

47 
OENERALSRH.’ :ITS DISEASES AND TEIEIB. CURE 

his men which infused into the Army of 

Northern Virginia its astonishing heroism. When on the third day of the battle 

of Gettysburg his great assault failed, 

and his men were driven back defeated, 

where was Lee? Forward among the 

Federal shelIs. Colonel Freman tie, a 

British ofncer present, says : “If Longatreet’s conduct was admirable, that of 

Qeneral Lee was perfectly sublime. He 

was engaged in rallying and in encouraging the broken troops, and was riding 

about a little in front of the wood, quite 

alone-the whole of his staff being engaged in a similar manner further to the 

rear. EIis face, which is always placid 

and cheerful, did not show signs of the 

slightest disappointment, care or annoyawe ; and he was addressing to. every 

soldier he met a few words of encouragement, such as, “All this will become right 

in the end: we”11 talk it over afterwards; 

but, in the meantime, all good men must 

rally. We want all good and true men 

just now,” etc. *. .” 

(Three ,lffonfh& fn the Southern b+fmie#, dprfiJune, f&S, Lleut.-Colonel Fremantle, p. 274 

(X663). 

48 
OENERALSHIP : ITS DISEASES AND THEIB CUBE 

When, on May 12th, 186ct, Grant’s 

troops broke through the apex of the Confederate works at Spottsylvania and the 

position became critical, wbat did Lee 

de? He again rode forward. Of this 

ix&dent General Gordon writes: 

‘Lee looked a very god of war. Calmly 

and grandly, he rode to a point near the 

eent.er of my line and turned his horse’s 

head to the front., evidentIS resolved to 

lead in person tbe desperate charge, and 

drive Haacock back or perish in the effort. I knew what be meant. . s .I resolved t,o arrest him in his effort, and 

thus save to the Confederacy the life of 

its great leader, I was at the center of 

that line when General Lee rode to it. 

With uncovered head, be turrled his face 

towards Hancock?s advancing column. 

Instantly I spurred my horse ~CFOSS old 

ITravelEer)s (Lee’s favourite charger) 

front, and grasping his bridle in my 

hand, f checked him. Then, in a voice 

which I hoped might reach the ears of 

my men and command t,heir attention, I 

called out, Weneral Lee, you shall not 

lead my men in a charge. No man can 

49 
OENERAEB?II’:ITS DZSEASES ANDTEIEIU CUW3 

do that, sir. An&her is here for that 

pUlpE%?. These men behiud you are 

Georgians, Virginiaus, and Carolinians. 

They have never failed you on any field. 

They will not fail you here. Will you, 

boys?” The response came like a mighty 

anthem that must have stirred his emotions as no other music could have done. 

*.a l’No, no, no; we’ll not fail him”. . .I 

shouted to General Lee, “You must go to 

the rear.” Tbe echo, “General Lee to the 

rear, Qeneral Lee to the rear!” rolled 

back with tremendous emphasis from the 

throats of my men.” 

VVhen in the World War did the men 

in the battle front order one of our generals back, let alone tbe general-in-chief? 

Never ! No general-in-chief was to be 

found there, sometimes, perhaps, a hrigadier, but as far as 1 have beeu able to 

ascertain, w&h the solitary exception of 

MajorGenernl Elles, never a corps QF a 

divisional commander. Why? This is 

my next problem; these men were not 

cowards, far from it, for many were potentially as gallant and courageous as 

*Reminiscences of the Cfufl War, General J&I 

B. Gordon, p. 2TCI (1904). 

60 
OENERALSRIP :ITS DLSEASES AND ‘IX-IElR CURE 

Grant or Lee, as Lord Raglan or Sir 

Colin Campbell, No, it was not cowardice, it. was the amazing unconscious 

change Thich rose out of the FrancoPrussian ‘CVar, and which in a few pars 

obliterated fmie generalship, dehumanizing and despiritualiziug the general, 

until he was turned inta an omce soldier, 

a telephone operator, a dug-out dweller, a 

necbanicd presser of brrltons which 

would detonate battles, as if armies were 

wet1 tamped explosives or intricate soulIess machines. 
TRE DlSEASES DIAGNOSED 

SELF-PRESERVATION is the keystone in the 

arch of war, because it is the keystone in 

that greater arch called life. No normal 

man wishes&.o be %iEled in battle, though 

he may Iongto die in battle rather than 

to die in his bed. Ffe does not wish to do 

60, because there is no virtue in mere dying, for virt& is to be gought in living 

md liting rightly. fn the days of handto-hnnd f$$tt$ung, it was only right for a 

commander to be in the front6 line, the 

battle might be deeided in ten minutes, 

and often had he been elsewhere he might 

as well have been out of the picture 

altogether. In the days of the Bintlock 

musket it was much the same, fire was 

delivered at from 100 to 50 paces, and 

battles were sometimes decided by a bayonet charge. Then came the rifle, and 

decision is prolonged ; it may be dragged 

out to days? weeks and even months, as 

was the cage in the World War. What 

does this mean? It means that genernlship has been rendered more eIastic. Today, the general can frequently retire 

62 
QENEBdLSHLP : ITS DZSEASES AND TBRIB CUFIE 

from the front altogether, and the more 

self-protective this front becomes the 

more often can he do 50. But when he 

is attacking he must be there on the spot, 

not to direct only but to encourage; for 

however exalted may be his rank, he 

sboufd never forget that he is still a 

soldier. As I[ have just shown, down to 

1865 this idea held good, and though the 

vastly increased range of the &fin% rifle 

nndonbtedfy rendered generalship more 

hazardous, it remained essentially as it 

atways had been. It was not weapon 

power alone which forced the change, 

though the increasing range of weapons 

playing consciously, or unconsciously, 

npon the instinct of self-preservation 

may have created a sentiment to avoid 

danger. I think it did, and as this sentfment began to rise generalship began to 

wane. 

Other factors were, I believe, more important, I have mentioned size and complexity of organization, and to these I 

will now add age. Old generals have 

always exIsted, but in the Napoleonic 

Wars, the average age of the higher commanders was under forty; at Waterloo, 

63 
GENERBLSEPIPIXTSDLSGASF,S~T~"D THEIR CURE 

Napoleon was forty-six and so was Wellington. In the American Civil JVar it 

was mucb the same. In my book--The 

Cfeneralsl~ip of Ulysses S. Bra~ttE”---X 

pointed out that, in 1SG1, the average nge 

of twenty Federal and Confederate oficers wba, as generrk9, played leading 

parts in the war, was thirty-eight and 8 

half years. Iu tfre France-Prussian War, 

the age n-as more advanced, but this war 

was so brief that little opportunity was 

offered for the younger men to rise in 

rank. It was so successful, nrkd its suecess could so clearly be traced t.0 superior 

organization, superior tactics and supcrior strategy, that, afkr the war it was 

overlooked that colonels still led their 

battalions into action, and that all but 

the highest grades of generals were cm 

the battlefield and r&kin the bullet zone. 

Some gears ago now, I visited t.be brttt,lefield of IRezonville, and a little west of 

the vilhge I came across a mm11 bench 

upomr which the King of Prussia was 

seated on the evening of August 18tb, 

f8SQ, when he received a message from 

ET& @eneraEship af Ulysses 8. Qranf, Calo?El 

J. F. Cf. Fulhr, p. 5 (1929). 

54 
GENERALSIn : ITS DISEASES &.r\;i) Tl~Enz CURE 

Moltke announcing the vict.ory of Gravelotte. At the time it struck we that for 

so aragust a personage it was estraordinarily near to the front. To-day, the 

King would have been at least fifty miles 

further back, or mom likely in Berlin. 

In war it is almost inlpossible to cxaggerate the eril effects of age upon generalship, and through gcnera’lship on tbe 

spirit of an army. In peace time it may 

be otherwise, but in war time the pErpieal, inteIJectaa1 and moral stresses and 

strains which RPC at. once set up immediately” discover the weak links in a general% harness. First, war ,3s obviomly 

a young man% oecupnfion; second&, the 

older a mm grows the more cautions he 

becomes, and thirdly, the more fixed becotne his ideas. Age may .endow a man 

with experience, bat in peace t.inre there 

em be no morR1 experience of ivar, and 

Eitt?e @pica1 experieuce. Nothing is 

more dangerous in war than to rely npon 

p.eace Lraining ; for in modern times, 

when war is declared, training has 

always been proved out of date. Consequently, the more elastic a man% mind is, 

that is the more it is able to receive and 

65 
GENERALSHLP :ITS DLSEASES AND TETEtR CURE 

digest new impressions and experiences, 

the more commonsense wiIl be the actions 

resulting. Youth, in every way, is not 

ody more elastic than old age, but less 

cautious and far more energetic. IR a 

moment youth wiif vault into the saddle 

of a situation, whilst old- age is always 

looking round for someone to give it a 

leg up. 

I%ysicaIly an old man is unable to 

share with his men t.be rough and tumble 

of war; instinctively he shuns discomfort, he fears sleeping under dripping 

hedges, dining off B biscuit, or partaking 

of a star-lit breakfast, not because he is 

a coward, but because for so many years 

he has slept between well-aired sheets, 

dined off a well-laid table and breakfasted at 9 o’clock, that he instinctively 

feels that if these things are changed he 

will not be himself, and he is right, for 

he yitl be au uncomfortable old man. 

Napoleon 2.2 a case in point. When a 

young man, as Baron van der Qoltz 

writes, We passes% half the day in the 

saddle or in his carriage, made all dispositions for his great army, and then 

dictated to his aides-de-camp ten, twelve, 

66 
OENEEALSRW :ITS 1511SEASES AND TIIFXR CURE 

fourteen, or more tong letters, a labour 

which alone is sufncient to keep a rapid 

writer fully employed. “I am in most 

excellent health; I have become somewhat stouter since I left,” he wrote from 

Gem to the Empress Josephine, on Oetober 13th, 1806, at two in the morning, 

“and ret I manage to do same Afty miles 

a day on horseback, and En my carringe. 

I lie down at eight, nnd get up again at 

midnight; I often think that you hare 

not then as yet retired to rest?” 8uch 

restless activity on the part of the general is the first condition of connected 

and rapid action in war.” 

Then a few years later, when only 

forty-one years of age, he complained 

that he lacked his fortner tigour. ‘The 

smallest ride is a labour to me,’ he wrote; 

it was much the same with Frederick the 

Great also. When forty-eight ye,ars old 

he ‘poured out his heart to his friend 

d*Argens: “I have to perform the lahours 

of a IIercules at an age when strength 

forsakes me, debility increases, in one 

*T&c Natfoar in Arms, Colmar voa der Qattr, 

Eagllslt m1t1on. p. 376 (1906). 

67 
OENERALSIID? :XTS DISEASES AND TIIEIR CURE 

wart7 when hope, the comforter of the distressed, begins to f@El me.“’ ‘* 

Thus we see how surely the physical is 

the foundatian of the moraf, and boa 

these physical defects, for defects they 

are in war, ranct upon 8 geuerlul’s moral 

8ease by subordinnting it to intellectunl 

achievements. hfore and more do &r&egieal, atlministrntive 81~1 trrcticrt? details occupy his mind and pinch out the 

moral side of his nature. Should he be 

a mm of abilily, he becomes a thinker 

rather than a doe~,aphnner rather than 

a leader, until mornllg he is as far removed from his men as a chess player is 

from the chessmen on his hoard. Tbe 

more he is thrown back upon the intellectual side of war, the more sedentary 

he becomes, nnt.3 8 kind of military 

sehold53sm enwarps his whole life. 

The repercussion of anch generalship 

on subordinate command hns always 

been Inmentnbfe, beennse whnterer R general mny be, be is always the example 

which the bulk of his subordinate commanders will PoIIow. If he becomes 8n 

office sddier, they become 0Mee soldiers; 

‘Ibid. p. 125. 

58 
OENEEAISIIKP : ITS DISEASES ANi) TREIR CTJRC 

not only because his work mnkcs their 

work, but because his morale rmkes their 

morale: how can he order thein into 

danger if he remains in safety? If the 

general-in-chief does not face discomfort 

and danger neither .witl they; if they do 

not, neither will their subordinat.es, until 

the repercussion exhausts itself in a devitalized &ring line. 

The years which followed the Ii’rnncoPrussian war saw many changes. Germany rapidly became industrializctl, and 

the spirit of industry, which is rssentinlIy 

material and mercenary, surreptitiously 

crept into her army, which for forty 

years dominated military thought. Bulk 

weight of numbers, in the foot.steIls of 

bulk weight of commodities, became the 

prevailing doct,rine of war. In FranTe 

there arose what has been called the 

moral school of war, which in fact was 

not 80 much a moral school as an intellectual one. There was much talk of the 

offensive, of the will to conquer, of la 

gZ$ire and of ci la bnimmtfc, of urging 

the men on; but there was littIe talk of 

nrging the generals forward. It was in 

truth a demaralizing school, because, 

69 
GENEHAtSIIIl’ : ITS DISEASES AND THEIR CUBE 

whilst the men were exhort.ed to die for 

their country, the generals were not eneoaraged to die for their men. In England we maintaioed the old iden, anyhaw 

in its greater part, and were despised by 

foreign soldiers for so doing. As Iate as 

the South AfrEcan War, personal contact 

between general and Bring line was normally maintained ; but when the Warld 

War broke out, BO intetleetually unprepared were our higher commanders, that 

they were at once sucked into the vortex 

of impersonal command which had been 

rotting generalship on the Continent for 

forty years. 

The horde army paralysed generalship, 

not so much because it changed tactics, 

but because it prevented tactics changing ; the one iden being, not to improve 

the quality of fighting, but to add to the 

quantity of fighters. New weapons were 

introduced yearly; but in its essentials 

the old tactics remained the same, numbers being considered the primary factor, 

with the result that directly a war was 

declared, tactics broke down and generalship became ineffect.ive, But more detrimental still, numbers added vastly to 

60 
OENEBALBRU? : ITS DISEASES AND TJ3EIB CURE 

administrative dimculties, that is the 

handling of the rear services; so much so, 

that generalship was absorbed into quartermaster generalship, until in the World 

War all eommanders superior to a divisional commander were nothing more 

than eommissary generals. 

Ae the. general became mare and more 

bound to his offke, and, consequently, 

divorced from his men, he relied for contact not upon the personal factor, but 

upon the mechanical telegraph and telephone. They could establish contact, but 

they could accomplish this only by dragging subordinate commanders out of the 

firing line, or more often persuading 

them not to go into it, so that they might 

be at the beck and call of tbeir superiors. 

In the World War nothing was more 

dreadful to witness than a chain of men 

starting with a battalion commander and 

ending with an army commander sitting 

in telephone boxes, improvises? or actual, talking, talking, talking, in place of 

leading, leading, leading. 

A fallacy, which may be largely traced 

to the telephone, is that the further a 

commander is in rear of his men, the 

61 
UENERALSIIJiI’ : ITS IJISEASES AND‘TIIRIR CURE 

more general a view can he obtaiu, because he will be less influenced by local 

considerations. It is a fallacy bc~ause, 

within certain limits, the further he is in 

rear the further he will bc awny from 

moral actualities, and unless he can sense 

them be will seldom be able fully to 

reason things out correctly. It is true 

that with a large army, once contact is 

gained and the advanced guards are in 

action, a general-in-chief should not remain with the van. Hut supposing him 

to be a man who cannot control his emotions, and one so influenced by local conditions that they obliterate his intelligence, that is supposing him to be a 

thoroughly bad general, he will not avoid 

bird%-eye views by going twenty miles to 

the rear. For if he does so, on account 

of his limited self-control he will he as 

strongly influenced by the rear atmos 

pbere and all it will convey to birn, as he 

would have been by the forward atmosphere bad he remained forward to 

breathe it. For such a man ebange of 

position is no cure, the only cure is 

change of appointment. 

Should the general in question happen 

62 
GENEIthISRU’:ITS DISEASES AND THEIR CURE 

to be a subordinate, theu this fallacy is 

still more marked; for, unless he cannot 

resist interfering with platoons, it is 

local conditions wbieh should monopolize 

his attention. The more bird’s.eye views 

--the better; the more local sensationsthe better; for each is a real picture and 

a real sensation; that is t.o say each is 

moral and physical as well as intellectual. A man who cannot think clearly 

and act rationally in the bullet zone is 

more suited for a monastery than the 

battlefield. 

All these many influences are accenluated by age, and drag a general, the older 

he gets, faster and faster, to the renr, 

The more cautious a general’beeomes, the 

more be likes to think over things, and 

the more be thinks tbings over the more 

likely is he to seek assistance from others: 

The German system saw some of these 

difficulties, more especially t.he intelIectual ones. It recognized that oId men do 

not make the best generals, and to overcome age and complexity it evolred the 

general staff, one bf the most, valuable 

aad Fet one of the most detrimental innovations in modern warfare. 

63 
GENEBALSKIIP :ITS DISEASES AND TEIEIRCUBE 

Formerly there was 8 general’s staff. 

This was composed of aidesde-camp, not 

spruce young of&era who do tlunkey 

work, but experieuced men who delivered 

the general’s orders and saw that they 

were carried out. Though this system of 

contact and cont.rol is ‘just as vaInable 

to-dny as it wits in the days of Napoleon, 

it has fallen into abeyance; for the 

present-day Ii&son officer is far removed 

from t?m old-fashioned Ride-de-crimp. 

Buch staffs are, however, not sumcient, 

in themselves, because war hns become so 

highly specialized and complex. Where 

the Gernmn system went wrong was thnt 

it superimposed a committee of irresponsible non-fighting officers on the general, 

creating f~ staff hegemony which virtu,7lly 

obliterated generalship. If the general 

was a tiger, his staff officers were selected 

from the Iambs; if he was lamblike, then 

they were chosen for their t.igerishness. 

The object ~‘8s not to liberate the general from non-fighting detail” and so aliow 

him to develop his persontrlity and exercise it; but to rest.rain or stimulate his 

personality and so establish n uniformity 

of doctrine and action. In brief, 60 thrtt 

64 
GENEIMMEIEP : ITS DISEASES AND TnElR CURE 

excessive size would not, set up excessive 

atraiu, the object was to crush out the 

personal factors nnd turn an army of 

milEions of men into one immense emoothrunning machine. This iderr was as monstrous as it was brutal, and within three 

weeks of the World War opening it ignominiously broke dawn; for Moltke at 

Spa, 100 miles from the front, could exercise no more control over the German 

armies, or the Pits.1 right wiug, than had 

he been in the moou. 

No soldier can doubt the immense 

value of a genernl staff if it is the general’s servant, aud not the general’s 

gaoler. I have said that the staOE hns no 

responsibi?ities ; it has none, though it 

has duties; because it has no powers of 

decision or commrrnd. It can suggest, 

but it has no responsibility for actions 

resulting; the general alone ts responsible, therefore the general alone should 

and must decide, and, more than this, be 

must eluborate his own decisions and not 

merely have them tbrust upon him by his 

staff iike a disc upon a gramophone. 

How many generda say to their staffs: 

‘Qive me all the facts and information 

65 
OBINERALSHIP :XTS DXSEASES AND THEIR CURE 

and then leave me alone for half an hour, 

and I will give you my decision.’ In 

place they seek a decision from their 

etafis, and freqnently the older tbey are 

the more they seek it, because they so 

often feel that the latest arrival from the 

Stan College must know more than they 

do-sometimes they are not wrong. How 

maay geaerals work out their own appreciat.ious, dict,ate the gist of their orders, 

or in peace time work out their own 

training exercises? I have been a general staff ofllcer for over fifteen years, 

and my experience suggests t,he answer: 

Very few.’ When I took orer command 

of a brigade, my brigade major was astonished because I in&ted upon doing 

what he considered t.o be hi,9 work, but 

wbieh in fact was essentially mine, making out the brigade training exercises, 

which under former brigadiers he had 

always done. 

How do these things affect the personal 

faet,or in generalship? They obliterate 

it, and why? The staff becomes an allcontrolling bureaucracy, a paper octopus 

squirting ink and wriggling its tentacles 

into every corner, Unless pruned with 

66 
QENERALSftlP :ITS DISEASES AND TfXELR CWRE 

an axe it will grow like a fakir’s mango 

tree, and the more it grows the more it 

c3rershadows the general. It creates 

work, it creates of&es, and, above all, 

it. creates the rear-spirit. No sooner is a 

war declared than t,he general-in-chief 

(an& many a i3ubordinate general also) 

fiads himself a Gulliser in LiHiput, tied 

do\vn to his office stool by innumerable 

threads woven out of the brains of his 

stafT and superior stnfls. 

In hi6 overland campaign, in I$%.$, 

General Grant was called upon to control 

etve armies of over half a million eombatants, and to coordinate their movements in an area half t.he size of Europe. 

His headquarters staff consisted of fourteen officers. I wonder how this compares, let us my, wit,h Sir Douglas Raig’s 

staff at. Montreuil during the fast Sear of 

the World War? 

AH these many t.hings, size, age, complexi ty, theory, staff organization, etc., 

rose to full growth dnring the years 1871- 

l9f4, and eoupIed with the unconscious 

whisperings of the instinct of self-preservation they drove the generals off the 

battlefields, and obliterating the personal 

67 

- -. 
GENERALSHXP : ITS DISEASES AND THEFR CURE 

factor in command dehumanized warfare, and, consequently, brutatized it. 

Let us now see how this sorry state of 

tiairs may possibly be remedied, possibly cured. 
THE REMEDIES SUGGESTED 

HAvlNo now diagnosed the various diseases, or at least the more virulent which 

to-day inflict generalship, the criticism I 

have indulged in will be of no great vntue 

unless remedies me suggest.cd. These 

can be discovered either through the 

costly process oP trial and error, that is 

by leaving tbings to chtlnce and letting 

experience point out our mistakes; or 

else by reflection: that is to think things 

ant a~ logically as we can, and then test 

our conclusEons during peace time as far 

as peace conditions will allow. If this is 

done, in an unprejudiced and disinterested way, though we may not be able to 

establish perfect health, tbere can be 

little doubt that we shall reduce disease. 

How are we to begin? By anaiysing 

the problem, which 8 moment’s consideration will show, embraces three factors, 

namely, the general, his staff and the 

army, or in other words-the brain, 

ntkvous system and muscles of any military organization. 

To start with the general, for as the 

69 
GENERALSFIIF : ITS DISEASES AND TEIEXE CUREI 

Chinese say, fish begins to rot at the head, 

how are we going to examine him? His 

work, like that af any other man, is cast 

in three apberes-the physical, the intellectuui and the moral. 1 will examine 

nthese in turn. 

Physically, health, vigour and energy 

are essential assets, and there can be no 

question, that norrnrtlly they are the attributes of youth rather th%n of old age. 

When Napoleon said thnt no general of 

over forty-fiye years of age should be allotted an active command in the field, 

and thnt no general of over sixty shouId 

be given any but 8u honorary appointment, he was thinking of the physical_ 

factor in commanct.” Accepting these 

ages as the rule, a study of history will 

at once show 11s that he was not far 

wrong; for though there are exceptions 

to every rule, at least seventy-five per 

cent of the renlly great, IX& merely noted, 

generals in history, were under forty-fire 

ycnrs of age.’ 

9 Bsron ron der Goltz says: ‘In the case of 

nexsgennrlnna, horrerer, the ntnd enn scarcely 

work with nnlmpRlr4 rspldlty or memory retain 

fts old olgour.‘-- The Natfon in Arma, p. 126. 

‘See Appendix. 

70 
GENER~HtP :XT9 DISEAWZ AND TIXEIB CIJRE 

Here ie onr,ibst great difficulty, Peace 

conditions do not permit of such a reduction in years. In our own army we find 

brigadiers of fifty-seven, major-generals 

of sixty-two, and lieutenant and fuit generals of sixty-seven, and though these 

ages could, I thiuk, be reduced by several 

years, tbey cannot possibly be reduced to 

Napoleon% figure; for if the more senior 

ranks were~ compelled to retire at fortyfive, or even fifty, few fathers wouEd put 

their fwns into the army, in fact the army 

woufd cease to exist. 

The only way to tackle this problem is 

eEearIy to differentiate between peace and 

war conditions; to accept that during 

peace time the old; like tbe poor, will 

always be with us, and that consequently 

we must arrange. things differently in 

war time. 

The arrangement I anggest is this: accepting Napoleon’s maximum of fortyfive, a most carefully selected roster of 

ofllcers between the agea af t.hirty-five 

aJld forty-five, of&era who have shown 

high powers of command, shonlid be kept, 

and irrespective of what their rank may 

be on the declkration of war, the whole 

71 
GENERALSHIP : ITS DISEASES AND TREIE CUBE 

of the higher combatant commanders be 

selected from it; the older men being 

either put on the reserve list, or kept at 

home to raise and train new units. 

At once two objections, far more 

obvious than real, will be raised to this 

suggestion, namely: (1) these ofBeers 

will not possess the necessary experience 

in command, and (2) when war breaks 

out they will: be strangers to their formations ana know few of their oiSlcers. 

As regards the first, it is perfectly true 

that for administrative work, experience 

in the routine of higher formations is of 

considerable value; but it is a complete 

myth to suppose, anyhow In our army, 

that extended powers of command can be 

cultivated by a brigadier, a divisional or 

an army commander. Bfy experience is, 

that there are only two units in which 

command is a real and not merely a 

paper expression-the c0mpnn.y and the 

battalion, and of course equivalent units 

in the other arms, after which command 

is RO completely absorbed by administration that it ceases to be command at all. 

As a brigadier I found unlimited time at 

my disposal, so little could I command, 

72 
(;IENERADSHXP : ITS DISEASES AND THEIR CURE 

and, as a general eta5 05lcer to more 

than one able divisionzll commander, all 

I c8u say is, that were I ever to rise to 

to such 8 giddy height I &ould not 5nd 

less. In our extremely weli organized 

army, in which no brigadier, di$sioaal 

commander, or commander-in-chief, is allowed to expend twopence without a sbilling’s worth of Treasury sanction, there 

ie no responsibiliby and no real higher 

command. 

As regards the second, it is true that 

old age from command point of view 

(from forty-5ve upwards) does not neceseariiy prevent a general getting to know 

his of&era anyhow by name, and ob= 

viously there ia 8 real advantage in this. 

But if, during war time, he is going to 

eit in B chhteau, or dug-out, it doea not 

matter much whether he knows the of% 

eera in the firing Fine or not. Also, if he 

fs going to go down with an attack of 

lumbago, or a chill on the liver, each time 

he sleeps under the stars, again this advantage is someThat discount.ed. As I 

maintain that the proper place for a 

general is with his men, sharing their discomforts and dangers, and as I will ehow 

- 
QENEl2ALSlIIP :ITS DISEASES AND THEIR CUBE 

later on that ?ew tendencies in war wilI 

enforce this, I consider that to put the 

younger men in command is anyhow the _ 

choice of the lesser of two evils, an evil 

which I will also show can be mitigated 

during peace time. 

To turn to the second sphere. A rtmn 

fs inteIlectually at his best between the 

ages of thirty-tlve and forty-five, end this 

iR proved by the fact that the majority 

of the great artists, scientists, phllosophers, poets, inventors, business and professional men generally have accomplished their best work before the tlge of 

forty-fire; because in middfe life a 

man’s opinions become set, imagirmtion 

dwindles olnd ambition recedes. If a roster of aspirant commanders is kept, as I 

have suggested, then, during peace time, 

these ogcers should be thoroughly 

trained in their future duties, an.d should, 

whenever possible, be attached to the 

formations which in the ev.ent of war 

they will command, 80 that they may get 

.to know their future .subordinrrtes. Trrrining should sometimes be with troops, 

wben they can Ret as chief nmpires, and 

sometimes without troops, when they can 

74 
set the exerches; but Bornetimes, aX30, 

and often, exercises should be W-W&XT. out 

without staff nwsislnnce-this system I 

will now exph3in. 

I have worked out scores of exercises, 

and taken part in dozens of staff tours, 

and though I am of opinion that my 

various generals seldom satisfied their intellectual hunger, I anyhow learnt this: 

that exercises set to bring out definite 

76 
QENEXtAU3HLP :MY3 DISEASES AND THELR CURB 

tactiGaE fessons are ncrt worth the setting. 

What an exercise should bring out is the 

peraona2ity and mmmort sestse of the 

getterala. What do they know and what 

do they not know; what wilE they t-h-e 

to do, and what will they not dare to do? 

On meh things wilt future victory and 

defeat depend, far more 80 than on dotting the i”a and crossing the t’s of operation orders. Therefore, I suggest this: 

that two or three times a year the generals should be assembled zcithout their 

staf&., and set some quite simple staff 

College exercise to work out in all its details-appreciations, operation orders, 

admiaist.rative instructions, etc., and 

that any genera1 failing to obtain, say, 

fifty per cent of marks, should be compelled to resign his commission. If such 

a system were instituted, and it might 

with advantage be further elaborated, E 

am cert,ain that the intefieetual sphere of 

generalship would be va&ly extended and 

the promotion list somewhat eased. 

Again, t”be old eystem of maneuvres, 

since 1925 dropped by our army OR the 

score of expense, was a very excellent 

one, not that it taught the regimental 

76 
QBWEBALSHIP : ITS DXSEASES AND TEEIR CUBE 

Miters or their men much, but that it 

tested out the generals. Concerning Lord 

Kitchener we read: 

‘After his Grilliant victory at Omdurman, Lord Kitehener informed a foreign 

Military Attach6 that the training of 

British generals would be defective so 

long as it was not decided in Englnnd to 

have manfzuvres on a large scale. He admired the great German man@uvres, for 

they afforded the sole means by which a 

general could have practice in handiing 

large masses. As SOUR as he was appainted Commander-in-Chief in Xndia 

after the war, and had a free hand, one 

of his first measures was to arrange for 

rsancnuvres far the army in India an a 

scale never before attempted either in 

England or in one of her colonies.‘* 

This mentid sphere, the sphere of the 

intellect, is a difXicult one to examine and 

to suggest for, Schemes, exercises, manaeuvres are in themselves Xiftle more than 

$ests of knowledge; but generalship de- 

* The War fn Soul& Africa, prepared in the HIStortcal Seetbn of the Great General Staff, Berlin, 

English EditIon, P&. I, p. 218 (X8041. 

77 
GENEEALSHEP:lTS DXSEBSES AND THEIEGUBE 

mands much more than this, for the true 

general is the creator quite as much as 

the appEier of knowledge. Of what kind 

of knowledge 1 Psychological rather than 

operational. Here history can help us, 

and in place of being looked upon as a 

clay pit to dig brick out of, it should 

.be considered au inexhaustible quarry of 

psychological ore. Xt does not really matter much what a certain general did at a 

certain date, but what is of importance is 

---z&y he did it in a certain set of circumstances. Tbe objeet of education is 

not so much to discover ‘what to think’, 

as to learn Ehow to think’. What is, or 

was, the governing reason of au actian? 

What is, or was, the nature of an army’s 

machinery; what can it, or could it, 

make? These are the type of questians 

au educated m3ud should ask itself. 

f remember once attending some 

French mancouvres, when after au exercise General Debeney asked a divisiona 

commander to explain h& plan to bin. 

This offleer began--‘My machine-guns, 

. . . ) wbereupou he was cut short by 

Debeueg who excitedly roared out : ‘Damn 

your machine-guns, f want yaw ideas? 

78 
QENEBALSHIP :ITS DXSEASES AND THEIR CUBE 

A well-stored memory is a great asset, 

for what a general knows is bound to 

tone and coiour al.l his work. But storing 

inust be methodical, the memory must 

not be like a stacked up second-hand 

bookshop; it must be rather Iike a carefully arranged library, in which the 

printed books are the experiences of 

others and the manuscripts one’s own 

experiences. Yet in war Et is not so mnch 

the knowledge contained in these books 

and these manuscript.s which is so important, it is insight into the personality 

of their writers including oneself. ‘Know 

thyself’ are two words of profound wisdom; yet in our existing system, though 

self-knowledge cannot be denied, selfexpression very largely is, because it so 

frequently clashes with the regulations. 

It is not recognized that the object of 

regulations and rules is to produce order 

in the fighting machine, and not to 

strangle the mind of the man who controls it. 

* What is the good of experience if you 

do not reflect?’ asked Frederick the Great 

-what indeed! And if reflection demands that one should be true to oneself, 

79 
OENERALSHfP : ITS DISEASES AND THElR CURE 

surely also will it be enhanced if one has 

the courage to be true to others. Why are 

we soldiers 60 cretiuoua in this respect? 

Why have we sach a horror for truth, for 

facts, for actualities, for possibiiities, for 

probabilities and even for obv%ous certain ties? The mswer is because our 

system of menta.). discipline is cretinous. 

When we study the lives of the great captains, and not merely their tietorles and 

defeat.s, whlrt do we diseorer? That the 

mainspring within them was origi~tclfify, 

outwardly expressing itself in unexpected rtcdions. Tt is in the mental. past 

in which mast battles are lost, and lost 

coaoentionatlg, and our system teaches 

us bow to lose them, beclrme in the 

8CbQOhO~ffl it PI-i11 nQt ~FMXX~Fld the conventional. The soldier who thinks ahead 

is considered, to put it bluntly, a damned 

nnisance. ‘Fortunate is that army whose 

ranks released from Ghe burden of dead 

forms, are controlled ,by natural, untrammelled, qrxiekening common sense.” Not 

only fortunate, b& thrice blessed! Even 

if its general alone possesses this essential freedom. Yet what is the use of study 

s Ibid. 801. If, p. 544 (1ccOn). 

80 
ing genius if we are not aIlowed to emulate it, and in our own small vay to be 

guided by it? 

It is fear, sot so much conscious or 

intuitive, that a corporal may, through 

knowledge, learn to fiespise his captain, 

and &at a captain may learn to despise 

his colonel, uud so on upwards untit the 

hierarehs are left naked and ashamed, 

which is the dry-rot of generalship. Intellectual courage is the antisept2, and 

though theoretically the training of the 

general shotild begin when he is in the 

cradle, praeticalIy it must begin when as 

a youth he enters his military college or 

academy. In these eentres of erystnl~ 

lized traditioudism what tfo we see? 'I'l~e 

ineulcntion af the spirit of generalship? 

--No! But ttreinfiltrntion of mht I will 

calli the ‘&zket complex'. 

Qames and sports bat-e 811 immense 

value as physic&I relaxers Rnd restorers; 

but in t.hernsetves they have no more military value than playing Addles or paintfng postcards. All these pastimes and 

many others bure some value, but no one 

of t&hem has a paramount value in fashioning a general. What games did EIaa81 
GIEMERhLSUIII':rrSDXSWASESANDTEEllZCURB 

nibal, JuIiua Ca~ar, GusOsvus Adolphus, 

Frederick the Great or NapoIcon play? 

AIexander, the greatest of them all, was 

willing to run with the sons of kings! 

but professional sports be considered unkingly if not cont.emptibIe. What has 

this “crick& complex;’ inhibited us witb? 

The comfortable theory that to amuse 

ourselves is the most perfect way of 

learning haw to become soldiers. We who 

pfays should be paid by promot,ion,’ such 

is the unwbispered canon of this cnIt. 

The result of this comfortable t,beory 

is meat32 strangulation. As tke cricket 

ball bounds tbrougb the air the cannon 

ball bounds out of mind. FMdierslGp 

Easing all stimulus becomes ‘shop’. Things 

miEitary ‘become intensely boring, and 

every excuse is seized upon to regularize 

and metbodizc training and organization 

so tbat they will cease to worry us. After 

the World Wm we were told that there 

was not going to be anotber war for ten 

years. ?I.‘hank God!’ whispered the generals, ‘we ahaII hare retired by then; let 

UB amuse ourselves-let us play.’ This 

hypotbetfcaI ten years bating now run 

their course, and though the world is 

82 
OENERAILSD[IP :!R? DISEASES AND TREIR CURE 

flatulent with war, another comfortable 

theory has been propounded, namely, 

that our army is a (police force’. EThank 

Qod!’ say the generals, now quite audibly, ‘what does a polleeman do? Ete 

walks up and dowu his beat and wears 

ant shoe-leather! Well, then, let us emulate him; our men shall go on marching; 

in aay case they hare bayonets, whilst 

the police have only truncheons-and in 

the afternoon we can play a little game,’ 

From our system af ‘what to think’ I 

will turn to-‘how to t&ink’, for until we 

begin to think correctly there can be no 

radica1 change. 

In generalship, and for all that in 

eitizensbip as well, what does ‘how to 

think’ ent,ail? A number of most difficult 

factors. First there is wiI1, which lies at 

the bottom of personality, Elsewhere, I 

have talled will ‘the gravit? of tbe mind”. 

1 wrote, “As the aim nf parity is to bring 

the stone (thrown into the air) to rest 

at ttre ceatre of the earth, where all activity ceases, so in war the aEm of a cammander’s will is to bring his enemy to 

rest, to deprive him of all power of mave83 
ERALSHD? :ITS DISEASES AND TF3EIT3 CURE 

t . ‘% Clausewitz says: Will ii3 not an 

irely unknown quantity; it indicates 

what it will be to-morrow by what it is 

to-day. . . each of the two opponents can 

. e .form an opinion of the other, in a 

great measure, from what he is and what 

he does.” 

Quite clearly does our system realize 

that will is a knazon quantity, for our 

regulations are never tired of reminding 

us that the supreme object in war is to 

impose our will upon our enemy; but in 

peaee time this imposition is the perquisite of the few to the utter detriment 

of the many, and again very largely because of the canonization of 

tiona. If what is written ie 

t&en it stands out.side crit,icism and cannot be questioned. Those in eantrol will 

not be asked awkward questions, and 

those under control, having to follow the 

regulations, do so automaticdIg with the 

minimum appeal to their brains. ‘lcfox 

eamforting,’ they aII insttnctfvely cry, 

*The Foundation8 of the L?kf@@x? of War, 

CWonet 3. F. C. Fuller, p 98 (19%). 

‘0s War, Karf van Ctaokewttz, Engllah Edltlon, 

vol. 1, pp. 743 (1908). 

84 
~F&?ER~HIP :XTS DESEASES AND THEFR CWlZP3 

‘here is a book which spares us the 

trouble af thinking!’ Thtls are brains 

ossified and thus are battles lost, for only 

in the Spartan theory of war can a generai know with any certainty what his 

opponent is going to do. This is why 

military thought aEwap tenda to get back 

to: the “push of pike’ idea-it is as simple 

as pushing a (pram’ or a wheelbarrowthe tactics of the nursery and of a primitive agrieul tural age. 

What. does imposit.ion of will demand? 

Reason; for in war each of the opposing 

willa is attempting to express a reason in 

order to gain an end. There must be 8 

reason for each action carried out during 

a war, and. - .it mnst be a good reason or 

a bad reason ; and if we hare LEO reason at 

a@, which has frequently happened in 

war, we reduce onrselves to the position 

of Xunatics. 

‘If we nnderstaed the true remon for 

any single event, then we &all be able to 

work out the chain of cause and effect, 

and, if we can do this, we shall foresee 

*events .and so be in a position to prepare 

ourselves to meet them. Onr reason is the 

director of our actions and also the spirit 

86 
OENERAISHIP :ITS DISEASES AND THEIR CURB 

of our plan. . . . We mnst analyse its 

motive and discover where it has failed 

us; thus we shnII turn errors to our advantage by compelling them to teach us.” 

Whg do we so persistently fair to do 

so? Not only because we lack imagination, but because we suppress the little 

that we have. The reasoning of onr tnctScs is not based on the possibilities, or 

even probabillt.ies, of the next war, not 

even on the acbualitics of the last, but on 

the impossibilities of the one before it, 

If we wish to think clearly, we mu& 

cease imitating; if we wish to cease fmitating, we mnst make use of our imagination. We mnat train ourselves for the uuexpect.ed in place of training others for 

the cut and dried. Audacity, and not 

caution, must be our wat.chword. Safety 

flrst mrty make a good midwife, but it 

will never make a good general. Safety 

first is like blocking every ball at cricket; 

anyhow, here is somebhing military we 

can learn from this game. 

Lastly, to turn to the moral sphere. 

FIere the problem, or the main problem, 

I The Foundations sf the Bdence Uf War, 

Colonel 3. F. C. Fuller, p. 94 (1926). 

86 
QBINEltAlX+UUF : ITS DISEASES AND TFIEIR CURB 

in a dual one, namely, to imbue a general 

with a sense of responsibility, which is 

the mainspring of decision, determination and resolutian, and to free him from 

the trammels of his headquarters and so 

enable him to mix with his men, to show 

himself to them, to speak to them, and 

advertise that he is a live, a human, and 

a perfional factor, 

The first of these two problems depends upon a remodelling of our system 

of discipline, vvbieh is still largely 

eighteenth-century. In war, as in peace, 

individuality is far more important than 

uniformity; pers6nalit.y than congruity, 

and originrelity than conventionality. 

Tar’, writes Clausewitz, ‘is the province 

of chance. In a~ sphere of buman activity is such a margin t,o be Xeft for this 

intruder.” As this is largely true, DO 

regulations and no rules can cover the 

art of generalship. Like the great artist 

the general should possess genius, and if 

he does not, then no effort should be 

spared to develop Ma natural abilities, in 

place of suppressing them. Our existing 

‘On Wur, Karl van Clausevdtz, Engltsh Edltlo& 

TOF. t, p. 48. 

87 
OENEBALSEHP : M’S DISEASES AND TI-XEIB CWB 

system is, so I think, based on suppression, suppression to a large extent of 

an unconscious order. The old are often 

suspicious of the young and do not welcome criticism, yet without criticism, 

both destructive and constructive, there 

can be no progress. As X have already 

mentioned, the easiest course to adopt is 

to lay down rules and regulations which 

must be impllcitIy obeyed; yet chance 

knows no compulsion, and such rules and 

regulations are apt to cramp intelligence 

and originality. This is seen clearly from 

the frequent use with which %olshetik’ 

is applied to anyone who dares to think 

independently; yet if this ‘vice’ will teach 

UR how to rely upon our common sense 

and how to speak frankly and without 

fear, what matters a name if common 

sense and self-reliance will help us win 

the next war. In place, so it seems to 

me, our present system of discipline, 

which is so truly Prussian and so antruly English, is responsible for creating 

what I will call the ‘Cringe-viki’, those 

knock-kneed persuasive tact-ticians who 

gut an army not with a knife but with 

a honeyed word. 

88 
BIENEBA.LSIIEP :ITS DISEASES AND THEIB (SURE 

The second of these two problems is of 

far greater aimp&ity. As a battalion 

commander is given a second-in-command, 

who should be his understudy and not an 

administrative hen brooding over the 

headquarter eggs, so should every commander in war, from brigadier upward8 

to general-in-chief, be given an executioe 

eecond-in-command, who behg able to 

replace him at any moment, wilI enable 

him to spend a far greater time than he 

now 61.811 wit% his troops. In peace time, 

during the collective training season, the 

roster officers, I have suggested, might 

frequently carry out such: work. Should 

the genera1 be killed, there wilX be little 

or no disorder, as there was when Stonewall Jackson fell at Cbancellorsvilfe; 

the second-in-command mill carry on, the 

cry being: Lc ge’tabral est mwt, uive te 

g&&a;kf Such a system is so obviously 

necessary and so simple, that it passes 

my understanding why it has not long 

ago been adopted. The reason probably 

ie, that in Continental armies the estabUshme& of a chief of staff-a nonexecutive olffcer-has obscured the value 

of an executive one. 

89 
QENERALSBIP : ITS DfSEASES AND THEIR CURE 

80 far the head, now I will turn to 

the nerves-the staff. 

When, a short time back, I hinted at 

a comparison between Qraut’s staff of 

1864 and Sir Douglas Haig’s staff of 

1918, it may have seemed I suggested 

that the British Commander-in-Chief’s 

etaff should have in size approximated 

to Grant%. The answer is-‘No and 

‘Yes’. ‘No’, because it is obvious that 

war to-day is far more complex than it 

was during the American Civil War. 

‘Yes’, because I am of opinion, that like 

practically every other headquarber staff 

in the war, C?.H.Q. could have been reduced though certainly not to fourteen 

officers. Assnming, however, that it could 

not, it is not so much .size which is the 

problem, as the contact which size is apt 

to establish with the general. Whilst in 

theory the idea of a staff is to relieve a 

general of work, in practice the last war 

certainly proved that the larger the staff 

was, the more a general became absorbed 

in its work. Each of&er was another 

tentacle of the octopus. 

The most practical way of overcoming 

this difkulty is to abolish the general 

90 
OENEBA.@.RKP :ITS DISEASES AND TEXEIII GUPD 

staff aad replace it by the old-fashioned 

general’s stat3 of aides-de-camp, and place 

the whole staff, t”he experts, advisers, etc., 

under a chief of staflt: with whom individual staff oEhm will establish contact. 

If this is done, then there is no excuse 

whatever for a general to get absorbed 

in staff work. His second-iu-comrnnntl 

will be at headquarters when he is out, 

aad the only stag oirtcer be need come 

tutu contact with is his chief of staff, 

whilst his own staff-the general’s staff 

-is there not to advise him, but to see 

that his orders are obeyed by his subordinate comtuanders-these personal 

liaison ofBcers are in fact an extension 

of his brain. 

I now arrive at the third and fitlal 

probIem, nameEy, the influence of the 

army, and above all the influence of its 

weapon6 upon geoeralship. Row can we 

reduce size alad complexity, and so 

modi%y tbe dangers of the battlefield that 

our supply of actual and potential geuorals and generals-in-chief will not run 

dry before the war is wou? 

Ef Z were to ask a watchmaker to make 

me a watch, would he select a pickaxe, 

91 
QENEBALSHIP :lTS DISEASES AND THEIR CXJRm 

8 crcrwbar and a steam-hammer 8s his 

tools? No-he would suit his tools to 

his craft. This is the point, and the most 

important point the theorists of w&r have 

overlooked. A general must be given an 

army he can command, and not merely 

an army he enn launch into battle like 

a ship from her stocks. Had Alexander 

the Great inherited a Persian horde, he 

would not have got anywhere near the 

Hindus, it is doubtful whetber he would 

ever have got out of Greece. aive a 

modern general 2,000,OUQ s&diet-s, and 

equipped as they are to-day, such an 

army will possess a potential bulletpower of 15,000,OOO rounds a minute. 

Yet in spite of this enarmous fire-power, 

df art, strategical and tactical, will 

vanish; for aI1 he can da witb this mass 

ie to advance upon his enemy, and attempt to swallow him up, ns Pharaoh and 

his host were rnfrallowed up by the Red 

Sea; for such hordes ‘can no more be 

manozuvred than could the herded multitudes of Xerxes and Darius. Yet if they 

stand still and fire, there is no breaking 

them by fire. 

Our present COnCeptiOn Of wctr, Con92 

---- .._____....~ 
OENF,BAI.i%EP : ITS DISEASES AND THEIB CUBE 

eeived in France, and during the last 

century elaborated out of all recognition 

by Prussia, is monstrous, costly and 

brutal in the extreme. It is the antithesis 

of Ruskin’s heroic ideal; for to ‘activate’ 

it, it demands tbe hcrdiug together of 

milfions of peasants and artisans, and 

then rsEaugbtering them on, wholesale 

fines. It is nothing more or less than ‘the 

rage of a barbarian wolf-flock’. 

EIaw can we change this? By disembarrassing our minds of the horde idea, 

the idea of brute masses of men and of 

Mcmgo1 inundrttions. Ewn if we cannot, 

or will not, do so, science and industry 

will do tbis for us. In their first great 

lap, from about 1850 until the last war, 

these twin world-powers gave us quautity; now they are beginning to give us 

quality, motorization and mechanization, 

wbfeb in the end are as inevitable as the 

superiority of infantry over cavalry once 

fire-arms were invented. 

These two powers will not only give us 

quality, but they will vastly reduce the 

size of armies, for the cost of motorized 

and mechanized forces will prohibit the 

raising of armonred hordes. They will 

93 
OENEBALSEMP :12’S DISEASES AND TflEIB CUBE 

simplify war, for whilst at present we 

me complicating military organization 

by mixing the new and tbe old arm8, as 

wa8 done and with simiIar results in 

the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, 

once we renlize tkat to harness a tank to 

an infantryman is as foolish a8 harnessing a tract.or to a mule, we shall And that 

an armoured force is as simple to handIe 

and command, as was the army of MarIborough when compared to the lrrmy of 

Glustavus Adolphus. 

Whatrepercussions will mechanization 

have upon generalship? First, the comparative smahcss and ease of movement 

of ammoured forces will provide the average general ,with a far better balanced 

weapon than the unarmoured horde. 

Secondly, as armour will cut out the bullet, the d,anger of a qountry running dry 

of generals, if they act as generals should, 

will be vastly reduced. Thirdly, and this 

ie the most important point of all, as 

mechanized warfare will approximate in 

many ways to warfare at sea, a general 

&ho does not man a tank and coat,& bis 

tanks from a tank, will be about as much 

nae to his army aa an admiral who, re94 
fusing ta board his Ragship, prefers t-o 

row about in a dinghy. 

So, at length, by one of those enrious 

and mysterious twists in the spiral of 

human progress, we are, as If by a 

magician’s wand, wafted back to the days 

of Henry V, Edward the Black Prince 

and Richard Cozur de Lion. Therefore, 

nnless our generals show the courage of 

these men, as well 8s don their armoar, 

in its modern form of bullet-proof steel, 

meebattkution wifl prove of no more 

value than metallic junk. 

In such wars as these, who will be t.lre 

better general, that is the general the 

better equipped physically, intellectually 

and mornliry? WI1 it be the man sf sixt.yfive or of fort.y-five, of fifty-five olr of 

thirty-five? for there will be no dug-outs, 

no fixed ofBce6, no ehiteaux, in place-a 

bumping belching machine, and much 

breakfasting under the stars. Obrionsl~ 

the answer is that in nine wws out of 

teq tile younger man will beat the older 

man, as easily as David beat Qoliathand David was a mechanicat expert. 

95 
BE~ERALSIlIP : ITS DXSE.iSES AND THEIR CURi?, 

cQNCLUSIOx 

NWV to conclude this brief study of the 

most trernendous problem which will face 

us in the next wm-our geaeralsltiya11 I wil1 say is this: we are not a conCinentaI nation, therefore let lzs cease 

copying contineutatl tueEhods of genemlship, nnd iustead follow our own. Ilid 

ISolfc and Moore die for nothing thlrt 

we should Forget them for Teuton and 

Frank? Did WcIIington ralty his 

squares at materloo, and Roberts leatt 

the van of his army to Kanclahar merely 

to entertain us when we have nothing 

better to do than read their histories on 

a dull u-inter evening? We may be a 

nation of shopkeepers, but also are we 

ROE 8 nation of leaders? Look at the 

map! Every red mark and line was won 

for us by a band of deterwined md 

resolute nleu whose leaders would have 

scorned the idea of uot sharing tails and 

dangers with them. Therefore, I say, let 

us hare done with stock>-ard generalship, 

and get back to the old idea which haa 

made us what we are: that a general, 

however exalted be his rank, in body, 

heart and mind is still a soldier. 

96 
APPENDIX 

THE AGES OF 100 GBXERALS 

TEE following list is unprejudiced by any 

idea of proving Jouth to be in itself a 

military virtue, The names and events 

mentioned in it were jotted down from 

memory, the ages and dat.es being afterwards looked up. In several cases I had 

to change my original selection as the 

date of birth was unknown. I have not 

included names of generals after 1866, 

because from that date onwards generalship becomes senile. The interesting 

points to note are: that according to this 

list the average age? or zenith, of generalship is 40.36 years; that 14 per cent of 

the generals meutioned are forty-five 

years old or under, and that 4 per cent 

only are sixty or over. 

If we now mrrke a graph of the above 

showing the number of generals according to their ages (WC Graph No, I ), we 

find that the ,period of most effZent generalship lies between the years thirty and 

forty-nine, and that the peak is reached 
GEXERdLSIIIP :ITS DISEASES AND TIIEIR CURE 

betaeen the years thirty-five and fortyfive. Compnre these figures with Graph 

No. 3, which shows the average age, year 

by year, between Jrmuary 1914, and 

January 1933, of all FieId-Marshals, 

holding appointments, Generals aud 

Lieutenant-Generals in the British Army 

(excluding India cind ‘Ghosts’) on the 

active list. From this second graph the 

avernge age throughout this period works 

out at 59.9 years; that is approximately 

ten years outside the period of “most 

efficient generalship‘. As far as genernlship is concerned this shows clearly the 

reason why t.hroughout history great gcnerals hare been few in number-peace 

conditions do not fit war requirements. 

Finally, Graph No. 3 is a composite diagram of the period 1919-1932 taken as a 

whole, showing the numbers of Generals 

according to age. From this graph it 

will be seen that the period of ‘greatest 

employment’, ranges between the years 

fifty-five and sixty-five and that the peak 

is reached between the years fifty-eight 

and six@-t.wo, which, I think, compares 

favourab?? with most foreign armies except the Russian, in which, I am told, 

98 
GENERALSHIP :ITS DISEASES AND TFIELR CURE 

the higher commanders arerage between 

forty and forty-five years of age. As Co 

these figures I have no proof. 

Concerning the influence of youth on 

generalship, the following letter written 

by Bonaparte on January 20tb, 1797, and 

addressed to the Directory is of interest.: 

6 

. . . As to generals of divisiotrs, ~FIless they are off&rs of distitiction, 1 beg 

you not to setrd any to me; for our way 

of waging wsr is so different from otbcrs, 

that X de, not wish to entrust a divisiogl 

to a general untiE I have tested him out 

in two or three operations. . . . It is 

essential for the Army and tbe Rcpublic to send to MC here young people 

(de8 jemes gms) who are learning how 

to carry out a war of morement and manceuvres; it is wars of this antnre which 

hare enabled us to gain such great SWeesses in this armr.’ 

At this date Bonaparte was twentyseven years old and aIready bad to his 

credit one of the most remarkable campgigns in history. 

99 
Name Evant Dnte Aae 

Xeaophon 

Epaminondns 

Philip of 

Blecedoo 

Alexsnder the 

Great 

Eumenes 

Agathocles 

Demetrhe 

Pprrbus 

Phifopurnten 

Hannibal 

Ekipi0 

Africanrls 

Gnius JEnriu3 

Julius Ctrwtr 

Aralnius 

Baffle a/ Currota 401 B.C. 

Barth? of Lcuctra 37t “ 

Cnptain-Uerreral sf 33T ‘( 

Urf%Xe 

Bottle of drbela 331 ” 

Defeat of Craterrrrr 321 ” 

and Neaptolcmun 

Invasion of Carthage 31G *’ 

Biegc of Rhodra 305 I’ 

Battle of dst*ufum 279 *’ 

Battle of Mantinea 208 ” 

Rattle of thnnoe 2IG I* 

Eattfe of Zama 202 ” 

Confpest of Svmidia 106 “’ 

Eattfr of Lyons 58 ‘* 

Bottle of Truto- 9 A.D. 

Alerlc 

Theodork 

butye; Tl’old 

Back of Rome 

Battte of Sontius 

(FffQ?lZO) 

Ztattfe of Poitiers 

Battle of Tricameron 

8gwian Campaign 

Rat ttr of Tours 

Capitulation of 

Pavia 

fiicge cf London 

Indur Campaign 

Clovis 

Beliaarfus 

Chasroes I 

Charles JXarteI 

Chsrlemngne 

607 ” 

633 ” 

571 *’ 

732 ” 

774 ‘I 

King Alfred 

Msbmud of 

CHlazni 

Wflliam i 

fEngland) 

Snledio 

Riebnrd I 

(Englnnd) 

Jengbiz K~RU 

Uattie of Rartinpr 

Sonyue.vt of SyrEa 

Bottle of drruf 

Simon de 

Moolfort 

Crorting of t&c G-eat 

Wall of Chino 

Bottle of JIureC 

895 ” 

1001 I’ 

loGG ” 

llT4 ” 

1191 “ 

1213 )’ 

1213 ” 

John (Englnnd) Battle of Bouviner 1214 “ 

33 

33 

49 

44 

27 

2 

41 

30 

40 

i: 

2 

39 

E 

61 

63 

47 
h’ftme EvCnt Dote AK? 

Edward I 

t Engtsnd) 

Robert the 

Rruee 

Edwnrd III 

( EngEnnct) 

Timur 

Henry V 

(Eogtnnd) 

Cbnrlvs Vlli 

(Frnnce) 

QonsRlvo de 

Cordohs 

Qawton de Fair 

Cartes 

Peacnra 

Wiliiem the 

Silent 

Benry IV 

(Frwnce) 

Maurice of 

Naswau 

Qerwtavus 

Adaipbuw 

Wallenstein 

Bnller 

Torstensson 

Due d’lngbien 

Fromwe 

Montecuceuli 

Monk 

Turenne 

Luremburg 

Marlborough 

Elughe 

Peterborough 

Bcrwiek 

CharEes XII 

(Sweden) 

Gampoifln in Wafts J2i7 A.D. 38 

40 

34 

62 

28 

24 

42 

Bntfte of Rovrn,rn 

Cnnqueaf of blerico 

Ratfls of Pavia 

nefcnce of the 

h’etfldand.8 

Baffle of fcry 

23 

36 

36 

35 

Raftle of Lfitnw 

Battle of fI‘ilt.~twk 

Batffe of Dreitettfeld 

Bofflr af Rocroi 

Battle of Saaehp 

Batfte of Ztrtmarshausen 

The Dutch Wars 

nntfle of the Dtcnea 

Retreaf tc hiaesfticht 

RnffEe of Blenhrim 

Battle af Blenheim 

Campaign in Spain 

Baffle of dlmanra 

Baffle of Holorceeyn 
Name Event Date he 

&exe 

Fretlcrkk the 

Great 

Seidlitz 

Clive 

Ambrrst 

W?‘olfe 

WnRhington 

Oreeoe 

DumnurEez 

lhcbe 

BECJWEII 

Jottrdan 

Ussshna 

Dwaix 

Lake 

Ekmtt 

Nepoleon 

tsnnes 

Arch-Duke 

Charles 

Bhore 

a#rsrri 

Wellinltcn 

NPY 

Bliicber 

Rugeaud 

k%liasier 

Nicbolqon 

Jacksoa 

MccteEhlo 

Grant 

Battle of Fontenoy 1145 A.D. 49 

BaEttc of Rasshach 1767 ” 45 

Baffle of K’alin 

Battle of PLassfy 

Capture of Louisburg 

Capfuw of Qrtrbec 

Campaign of 1.nrklown 

Baffle of Gffildford 

Court rlolrac 

Balfle of demopycs 

Batfle of FvSschweilfr 

Bflffk of TIC-roirrg 

Battle of Flourus 

Raffle of Riroli 

Bottle of Mawngo 

Battle of Loawari 

Battle cf Aurter~ifr 

Balfle af Jena 

Baffle of AspernIfding 

Battle of dspernriming 

Bolt16 of Corfrnna 

Rattlr of BorodEna 

Baffle of Golomnnca 

Batik of l3orodiw 

Battle of Waterloo 

Campni+ in Algeria 

lStarmirag of Gebucrtopot 

Siege of Relhi 

Rhcnandaah I’ailey 

Compoign 

Pcninaula Campaign 

Capfwc of F'ickrburp 

li57 

176i 

1X8 

1769 

Xi81 

1iYl 

1 iEl2 

X79:1 

1591 

159.1 

1797 

lPo0 

3803 

1805 

18(x3 

1809 

lRO%? 

1857 

1362 

I%2 

lE03 

P, 

30 

32 

41 

32 

49 

39 

63 

25 

31 

32 

ii: 

ii 

37 

40 

38 

48 

:: 

43 

73 

52 

61 

35 

38 

38 

41 
Name Ewnt Date A&T 

Longstreet Raf6te nf Chic&a- 1803 A.D. 42 

3osepb 

3ohnston 

Lee 

LhllCOCk 

Rheridnn 

!Goltke 

mnwga 

Reflfrt of CIawrG 

fnrkt!ifie 

Fnirfn+ Court Zferltsc 

Raid 

Siege of Pefnrrhurp 

Paducah Raid 

Bhcnandoah Valley 

Campaim 

Bflaftta Campaign 

Wilderncr* Campaipn 

WiJderness Campa ig PI 

dlfanta Campaign 

~Srppretsiorr of Taipinp Rebellion 

Battle of Five Forks 

Raffle of Kiiniggriits 

1863 ” 

lw3 ” 

;;E :: 

18tM ” 

f864 ” 

1864 ‘* 

m4 ‘? 

18fi.l .+ 

1864 ” 

18FD ” 

16W ” 

ao 

to 

46 

43 

48 

57 

57 

40 

3c: 

31 

G8 
Graph No. I.--Qne hundred Generals, showing their ages at 

events mentioned in the A~pcndix. 
A# : a 

Cropl, A%. ~-The average age of British Generals and 

year by year between I 9x4 and rgp. 

,. .-- 
Gr@i No. p-The numbers of Generals a

in the British Army, according to age, b