The Education of Military Elites

Abstract

reasoning. The gulf between abstraction, however logically impeccable, and reality, was uncovered in 1914-15. In Great Britain the neo-feudalist attitude to senior responsibility survived along with pre-industrial techniques or organization for war until the Haldane reforms after the Boer War. The creation in I906 of a General Staff gave an importance to the Staff College and an incentive to officers to pass through it that had never before existed. In the syllabus the old emphasis on mathematics, geometry, and fortifications finally gave way to the study of the organization of bases, lines of communication, mobilization, large-scale movements by railway, and to the general study of strategy based on modern campaigns as well as on history. Under Robertson as Commandant, special importance was laid on the practical aspects of staff duties in the field. Theoretical study and discussion of a problem was followed by the drafting and issue of dummy orders in the field under simulated war conditions.39 The fruits of this work were seen in the unprecedented faultlessness of the British move to France in August I914, and the skill of the British retirement from Mons. Thus until the Great War the scope of instruction at all staff colleges remained limited to the conduct of war itself in modern conditions: that is, to armies and battles. The penetration of staff and command functions by the whole range of industrial, social, and political questions took place during the war itself, as did the reverse process of penetration of almost every aspect of national existence by the demands of defence. By 1916 it had become clear that national survival in the modern world involved a total and indivisible commitment of all resources. In Professor Michael Howard's words, 'Thus the scope of the military interest expanded enormously ... leaving virtually no aspect of national life in which the military leaders might not be legitimately concerned. No longer was the soldier simply the hero to whom a people turned to lead it to battle; he was now technical adviser whose views had constantly to be given weight in almost every branch of policy, internal and external.. .'40 The Great War was in this as in so much else a revolutionary turning-point. The effect on the education of inner military elites was seen in the I920S in the creation of higher schools of 39 Godwin-Austen, op. cit. pp. 241-5, 255-7. 40 Howard, Soldiers and Governments, p. 19.