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It was only in the natural order of things that when General George Washington was given Congressional authority to "command all the Continental forces, raised or to be raised, for the defense of American Liberty,” he should have adopted a staff system whose basic pattern closely resembled that in operation with the British. Washington himself had held two staff appointments under the British regime, first as District Adjutant General in Virginia, with the rank of Major, and then as Special Aide to General Braddock, during the disastrous campaign on the Monongahela of June 1755. But, of course, the British did not invent the staff system.
The first hint of an organized staff occurs in the somewhat sketchy records of the military force maintained by the Egyptian 18th Dynasty circa 1600 B.C.
Philip of Macedon (382-336 B.c.) was not only a master of strategy and tactics, but an exceedingly able administrator. Under his direction the furnishing of supplies was in the hands of a capable "Q” staff, the supervision of his camp under the control of an individual corresponding to the later Provost Marshal, while the missile-throwing weapons employed in siege operations were the particular charge of an Engineer Officer and a small corps of technicians.
It was such an organization that Alexander the Great inherited, and in the main such changes as he brought about were no more than elaborations of the fundamental system. Certain somatophylaxes were appointed who functioned as what later generations came to term, respectively, Chief of Staff, Quartermaster General, and Chief Engineer.
Of Julius Caesar it can fairly be said that although his was not the responsibility for devising the Roman Army’s staff system, he did much to improve and consolidate it. Caesar had assimilated the duties of a staff officer by himself functioning in that capacity, serving as a contrebemalis, or aide-de-camp, in the campaign against Mithridates of Pontus, and as quaestor (supply officer) under Antistius Vetus in Spain.
With Caesar in supreme control, something in the nature of an operations staff was made up by the tribunes temporarily relieved from exercising alternative days in command of troops.[1] (Ultimately the tribunes on active duty came under the Legate in actual command of the Legion, for whom the tribunes acted, respectively, as Chief of Staff and Adjutant and Quartermaster-General.)
In effect, it was the innovations introduced by Julius Caesar which carried staff functioning beyond the sys-
tern that had been employed by Alexander the Great, and which had served the earlier Roman commanders as their model.
With the collapse of the Roman Empire, warfare reverted for a time to primitive forays by "bandes” of soldiery lacking in the most elementary staff organization and control. In a delimited sense, conflict degenerated temporarily into the 'horde warfare’ of earlier days, with the aggressor "living on the country” he had invaded, thus reducing supply problems to a question of ensuring a reasonably equitable distribution I of the provisions accumulated by the foragers.
With the dynastic conflicts of feudal days, the War- | rior-King—or the Lord-General appointed in his place—was supported by a Marshal and a Constable, two functionaries whose respective duties corresponded, , approximately, to those of the present-day Adjutant- General and Quartermaster-General. A Clerk of the Ordnance was responsible for the upkeep and, with the j Waggon-master, for the transportation of the siege engines. With the introduction of cannon, his responsibilities progressively increased, as is witnessed by the | fact that by 1783 he had acquired the title of Master- General of the Ordnance. The Provost Marshal was held generally responsible for discipline in camp or on the line of march, being assisted in his none too easy labors by the Hurenweibel (crudely translated as whore- master) whose constant and exacting task it was to try and maintain some sort of order amongst the soldiers women stumbling along in the army’s wake.
On the "Q” side, when troops were in transit through one of their own cities or townships, or a friendly country, the Herberger (or Harbinger) had the responsibility of consulting with the local authorities to obtain food and lodging at reasonable prices.
In enemy territory the troops "lived at free quarter, exacting all they required in the way of food, forage, and fuel from the inhabitants of the countryside—3 procedure not best calculated to endear them to the civil population they laid under contribution. This process, however, greatly simplified the labors of the | Constable in his capacity of chief commissary.
Few medieval sovereigns could boast anything really formidable in the way of a permanent fighting marine.
In times of war, merchant craft were "arrested”—i-e> requisitioned—in the King’s name, hastily fitted with fore and aft-castles, and manned with a body of soldiery, whose responsibility it was to "fight” the ship while the mariners "worked” it. These improvised W3f vessels became the responsibility of the Keeper of th£ King’s Ships, whose task it was to equip and victual the craft, which were still led into action by the monarch or his duly appointed deputy.
By 1300 a.d. the title of Admiral (from the Arabia
"The Brass" 65
Amir-al-Bahr—Chieftain of the Sea) had replaced that of Keeper, and was usually held by one of the Great Officers of State. This individual, however, did not necessarily command at sea, but when he did was known as "Captain and Admiral” while afloat.
For the most part, the functions of the several individuals who came to hold admiral’s rank were administrative. Representing a branch of the judiciary, it was their responsibility to deal with those attainted of offences committed on the high seas, and with the dispensation of the law of wreck. They were also charged with the general control of certain specified ports, the maintenance of fishing rights over certain "banks,” and with the collection of murrage—the dues levied for the construction and maintenance of harbor works, sea walls, and coastal fortifications. In addition, >t was their responsibility, as representing the sovereign, to supervise the issue of letters of marque and reprisal, to preside at prize courts, and to exercise jurisdiction over their own territorial waters. Thus the Lord Mayor of London was ipso facto Admiral of the Port of London; and there was one official who rejoiced in the resounding title of Admiral of the Herrings.
At this stage of development, the admiral’s staff consisted of little more than a few technicians, such as a ship-rigger and a victualler, with "a clerk learned ln the law” to advise him on abstruse points of jurisprudence.
With various sinecurists rejoicing in such high- sounding titles as High Admiral, Lord Admiral, and Admiral of England, King Henry VIII (1509-1547) resolved that, to justify their very handsome salaries, these individuals should delegate the bulk of their routine "paper-work” and assume responsibility for ac- tual command at sea. In the absence of the Lord Admi- rd the necessary administrative work was carried out by a functionary known as the Lieutenant of the Admi- ra,ty- By the time of Queen Elizabeth 1st (1558-1603) 3,1 embryo staff—known as the Principal Officers of the Navy—had come into being under the Lieutenant °f the Admiralty. This staff was made up of the Treas- Urer, the Comptroller, the Surveyor, and the Clerk of jhe Ships. This consortium constituted what was *n°wn as the Navy Board, destined in the course of time to consolidation as a naval staff of equal scope 3r|d responsibility to that evolved by the Army.
With their preoccupation with creation of a strong ghting and mercantile marine, the Elizabethans paid tVcn less attention than their Tudor predecessors to the Organization of their makeshift land forces, raw militia "hose shiftless control the alarm occasioned by the aPpearance of Medina Sidonia’s Armada Invencible in e English Channel brought bleakly into prominence.
With the City Train Bands mustered and a rabble of half-starved militiamen drifting towards the projected Thames-side defense area, historian J. K. Laughton wrote, "four thousand who had marched, pursuant to orders, twenty miles into Tilbury, found they must go that distance from the camp again before they could find a loaf of bread or a barrel of beer. A thousand Londoners who were likewise on the march, were ordered to halt unless they could bring their own provisions with them.” Much of the substantial store of arms in the Tower of London remained unissued through sheer lack of staff planning for their distribution, while the inadequacy of medical arrangements for the maritime sick and wounded drew a remarkably sharp protest from Lord Howard of Effingham. "Sickness and mortality begin to grow wonderfully among us,” he wrote the Queen from the coast, "and it is a most pitiful sight to see, here in Margate how the men, having no place to receive them here, die in the street. I am driven myself, of force, to come a-land, to see them bestowed in some lodging; the best I can get is barns and outhouses. It would grieve any man’s heart to see them that have served so valiantly to die so miserably.” Staff work had left almost everything to be desired.
With the Scandinavian, as with the German staff structure of Frederick the Great, the tendency was for supply, intelligence, and movement to be controlled at the top by a single functionary. With the French, on the other hand, the trend was towards a proliferation of staff officers, each charged to carry out some sub-divided task. Thus with them, supply, operations, administration and intelligence were the responsibility of different heads of department, all with their deputies and understrappers, until the multitude of counsellors was less liable to ensure safety than to guarantee overlapping and confusion.
With the Civil War which broke out in 1642, the English Parliament in recruiting the "New Model” Army, could rely on the practical counsel of many experienced veterans of conflict in the Low Countries. With Sir Thomas Fairfax, the Commander-in-Chief, directly answerable to the Parliamentary Council of War, the Field-Staff structure was headed by a Lieutenant General, who acted as Fairfax’s Chief of Staff, and also commanded all the cavalry in the army. Then came the Commissary-general of the Horse, two Adjutant- generals of the Horse (who were regimental Captains), a Quartermaster-general of the Horse, a Markmaster- general,* a Mustermaster-general, and the Commissary- general of horse provisions, who was also second-in- command of the cavalry. In addition, the Commander-in-Chief was furnished with a personal secre-
*An assistant to the Commissary-general.
tary, a civilian, who constituted a direct link with the Parliamentary Council of War.
Third in rank and consequence in the military hierarchy was the Serjeant-Major-General,[2] who was in command of all the infantry. One of his responsibilities was to draw up the troops on the field of battle. To dispose the serried array expeditiously in the elaborate contemporary battle order, called for considerable technical skill and the wide experience of the salted veteran. "In his memory”, wrote Francis Markham, "he must ever carry ready framed the forms and proportions of sundry battlefields, any of which he is to sort or fashion to the ground, according as the necessity of the place requireth.”
The two most important subordinates of the Serjeant-Major-General were the Quartermaster of the Foot and the Adjutant-general of the Foot. Attached to both cavalry and infantry leaders were a number of officer-gallopers, who were entrusted with the task of carrying orders to different parts of the army during combat. Originally designated Corporals of the Field, in due course, they came to be known by the French title of Aides-de-camp.f
Fourth in rank of the General Officers was the Lieutenant-General of the Ordnance; under whom served the Comptroller of the Ordnance and the Engineer- General.
The gathering and sifting of intelligence was primarily the responsibility of the Scoutmaster-General. The Headquarters Staff also included a judge-Advocate- General and two "marshal-generals,” or provost marshals, one for the Horse and the other for the Foot. There were also a Commissary of Victuals, a Muster- master-General of the Foot and two deputies, Surgeons and Physicians to the Train which, of course, included the Artillery, a branch of the Service much neglected by both sides. There were also two Treasurers-at-war in control of military finances. With counterparts fulfilling similar functions with the lower formations, an elaborate structure of planning, administrative control, and supply had been organized right down to regimental level. For even the Colonel-commanding had what would now be termed his Adjutant and Quartermaster—not to mention his clerk and sundry scriveners, just to ensure that the flow of paper should be kept at full flood!
Broadly speaking, a staff structure had been evolved which, with minor modifications and adjustments became the standard pattern for all the major land forces
throughout Europe; although it was left to England to interpose a civilian Secretary-at-War, whose hampering power of interference constituted one of the Army’s abiding grounds for complaint.
So far as the Sea Service was concerned, the office of Lord High Admiral was put in a state of virtual suspension, his functions being taken over by a Commission of Admiralty and certain Navy Commissioners, working under the jealous eye and tight control of the (civilian) Parliamentary Council of War. It was left, however, to such hard-fighting "salt horses” as Robert Blake, George Monck and William Penn—somewhat oddly known as Generals-at-Sea—to formulate certain | Instructions for the better Ordering of the Fleet in Fighting a set of precepts designed to ensure cohesive action on the part of a fleet formation, and its better control by the officer in command. It represented the first ' attempt to evolve an operational doctrine, known to all, and upon which the conduct of all future sea encounters should be based. In effect, the Instructions summarized pithily what had been found useful in the past, and what seemed applicable to the future.
With the Restoration and Charles II firmly established on England’s Throne, the country’s Fighting Marine was given the title of Royal Navy—a combat force distinct from the wider service out of which it had grown; a calling with its own professional pri(k> manners, customs, and laws—almost, it might be said, , with its own language.[3]
A naval staff was headed by that excellent administrator and veteran war leader, James Duke of York, for whom the office of Lord High Admiral was again put into commission. In exile the Duke had served with distinction, on land and at sea, both with the French and the Spaniards, at one time holding the command of the Spanish Army in Flanders and the Admiralty of Spain. With a seven-strong Navy Board which included the experienced Sir William Penn and the indefatigable Samuel Pepys as Clerk of the Acts, the Royal Navy possessed a staff structure whose excellent plans for the future of the Fighting Marine were inhibited only by Parliament’s shortsighted dilatoriness in voting the necessary funds for the upkeep of its vessels and the payment of its foremast hands.
With William III, whose inherent right to sit on England’s Throne was distinctly dubious, to say least, Parliament’s complete control of the Fighting Services operated less to the detriment of the Roy** Navy than to an Army whose very existence was 3t the mercy of annual debate.
**See Morris, James, The Royal Navy, Proceedings, March, 1972, p. 62.
"The Brass” 67
In such conditions, the formation and consolidation of an Army General Staff was out of the question; although the need for such an organization was only I too starkly demonstrated with "Orange William’s” floundering attempts at generalship in his abortive campaigns against the French of 1792-3.
On the other hand, with a military leader of the stature of John, Duke of Marlborough, the excellence of the staff work by which he was supported tends to be overshadowed by the commander’s own flashing genius. Yet "Corporal John” would have been the first to acknowledge his indebtedness to Cadogan, his self- effacing Chief of Staff. The complete understanding and accord with which they worked is well illustrated by an incident which occurred on the eve of one of the
I Duke’s most notable encounters with his Gallic adversaries.
Accompanied by a number of staff officers, including Cadogan, and one or two doubtfully trustworthy representatives from the allied Dutch command, the Duke was intent upon making a careful reconnaissance of the terrain over which the forthcoming action would be fought. Cantering to a slight rise, Marlborough looked about him intently, taking in the lie of the land. In the act of bringing his horse’s head around, he dropped his gauntlet, and swinging in his saddle rapped out ' at the Chief of Staff with uncharacteristic harshness, Cadogan, pick up my glove.” The other members of the staff fairly gaped with amazement, wondering how j the proud Irishman would react to what was little less than a public affront. But, quite calmly, Cadogan swung himself from the saddle, retrieved the gauntlet, bowing low as he handed it back to the Duke.
That night Marlborough sent for his fidus achates and asked, "Do you remember the place where I dropped my gauntlet? I want the main battery to be ^t up there.”
"It is already in position”, Cadogan answered qui- etly; and the two men exchanged an understanding
smile.
"No war,” the Duke once wrote, "can be conducted successfully without early and good intelligence;” and fos supervision of that branch of staff work was unfitting; his secretary, the indefatigable Adam Car- donnel, dealt with the endless paper-work which the S|fting and correlation of intelligence requires.
The staff structure consolidated by Marlborough underwent no more than minor modifications through- °ut the War of the Austrian Succession (1742-48) and 'he Seven Years’ War (1756-63); in which latter convict American Provincial formations fought side by side "nth the red-coated "Bloodybacks” from the Mother- j c°untry. Which brings us back to George Washington. With a staff establishment which provided for an
Adjutant-General, a Quartermaster-General, Commissary-General of stores and provisions, Paymaster- General, Commissary-General of Musters, and Chief of Engineers, Washington’s prime difficulty was to find men with a sufficiency of the right sort of military experience to qualify for appointment to these several posts. His task was made no easier by the overriding authority of Congress, which permitted that body to interfere with the selection of officers for the various appointments, and even insist that their own nominees be given preference. Horatio Gates, for example, almost certainly owed his appointment as Adjutant-General rather to his talent for "lobbying” than to his suitability for the post. His limited experience as a member of the British Army had never gone beyond that of a regimental officer of no particular distinction. Thomas Mifflin was better at intrigue than at the painstaking task of administration; while Richard Gridley, appointed Chief Engineer, was the able technician at the head of a particularized service, and no more. Men of such natural military talent as Nathanael Greene, Henry
During Queen Elizabeth I’s reign, the Lieutenant of the Admiralty presided over a Navy Board consisting of the Treasurer, the Comptroller, the Surveyor, and the Clerk of Ships.
Knox and "Mad Anthony” Wayne were so obviously cut out as the leaders of fighting formations that there could be no question of relegating them to staff duties, valuable as their services would have proved, while von Steuben’s forte was training, and he was fully occupied in carrying out the specialized task with which he had been entrusted.
In effect, to all intents and purposes, Washington was his own Chief of Staff, his own A.G., his own Q.M.G., since there was no one of the right caliber and experience on whom he could lay his hand to fill the posts. Furthermore, it was not until midway through 1776 that, with the formation of the Board of War, something in the nature of a War Office was instituted to take charge of those general behind-the- lines administrative matters of which the Commander- in-Chief needed to be relieved. But as Marine Colonel J. D. Hittle noted in The Military Staff, "although the foundation of the War Board was of historical importance in the eventual evolution of the General Staff, it was of little immediate value to Washington, as there is no indication that it relieved him of administrative matters which should never have been his concern.” Considering that on one occasion, in response to Washington’s demand for more arms and munitions, the War Board solemnly suggested that if he were short of firearms, he should train his men to use bows and arrows, the value of the institution in its early days can scarcely have been exhaustive.
Washington must also be credited with the organization of what proved to be the embryo of the United States Navy, since it was upon his initiative that a small flotilla was put into operation to intercept supplies destined for the support of the British force in Boston.
At the outset of the conflict, each maritime Colony had its own Navy Board. Ultimately, however, the Continental Congress took over control of the Fighting Marine, adopting a definite code of Naval Regulations in the late October of 1775.
But in the accepted sense of the term, there was no such thing as a naval staff; such commanders as John Manly and Esek Hopkins received their instructions from the 13-man Marine Committee which continued in office until the December of 1779, when a five-member Board of Admiralty took over its responsibilities. This arrangement lasted 18 months, whereafter all naval matters came under the control of the Agent of Marine, Robert Morris.
The staff structure brought into operation for the control of the "Roundhead” New Model Army had no counterpart throughout the mid-18th century. The elder Pitt had been advised, respectively, on military
and naval matters by Field Marshal Lord Ligonier and Admiral of the Fleet Lord Anson. Since he had paid considerably more heed to their counsel than is customary with the politician, with the conclusion of the Seven Years’ War he had emerged as a victorious nation’s most generously belauded leader.
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But Pitt’s virtual retirement from active politics had been followed by an unhappy era in which the control of the Army had fallen into the hands of the ineffable Lord George Germain, 'the Great Incompetent of Minden’; while the Royal Navy’s destinies had lain at the mercy of the fourth Earl of Sandwich, perhaps the most unconscionable jobber ever to pass through the portals of the Admiralty. The Secretary-at-War was invariably a political placeman, while for a whole decade—from 1783 to 1793—the office of Commander- in-Chief was in total abeyance.
With the outbreak of the French Revolutionary War, both the Army and the Royal Navy were definitely in the doldrums, with no Service chief at the head of either, and nothing in the way of a staff organization in any way worthy of the name.
It was not until the appointment of Frederick, Duke of York, as Commander-in- Chief* and Old Jarvie’s (Admiral the Earl of St. Vincent) elevation to the post of First Sea Lord, that the fighting forces were subjected to that reorganization and revitalization of which for so long they had been in the direst need.
Like Marlborough, Wellington was a military leader whose overpowering personality and unwearying in' dustry are apt to obscure the steady support given him by his staff. Not that the Iron Duke was blessed wid> a principal assistant of anything like the caliber of the redoubtable Cadogan. Sir George Murray, the Quarter- master-General,f was discreet and painstaking; but that is the most that can be said of him. "Wellesley’5 Adjutant-General,” Fortescue noted, "was a compile1 of daily returns and no more. The Military Secretary was literally a secretary, who kept a register of corre- spondence, and wrote what he was told to write.”
Napoleon, on the other hand, owed far more than is generally recognized to the brilliant staff work ot his Chef d’etat major, Louis Alexandre Berthier, and hi5 carefully picked subordinates. It was Berthier’s absence from the Emperor’s side throughout the "Hundred Days” which ended so disastrously for the French °n the field of Waterloo, which contributed as much a5
‘Whatever his defects as a commander in the field, as an administrat0< the Duke of York was in the very first class. Sir John Fortescue "He took over a number of undisciplined and disorganized regiments, W|c for the most part with the worst type of man and officer, and in less d'-"' seven years converted these unpromising elements into an Army”, f Ranking as Chief of Staff, whereas in India the Adjutant General n that rating.
"The Brass" 69
[
anything to Napoleon’s downfall.
Toward the end of the 19th century, so far as command and control in the field were concerned, a staff structure had been evolved which was subjected to little subsequent modification. But with the head of State no longer accompanying and at least nominally directing the course of affairs in the actual theatre of war,* the tendency arose for a staff organization to be set up in the homeland whose primary function was to interpret gubernatorial policy in military terms, and frame the directives by which the said policy was to be carried into effect by the commander in the field. In Great Britain the office of Commander-in-Chief was abolished, his functions being taken over by the Chief of Staff; civilian control was ensured by the creation of an Army Council headed by a Parliamentary Secretary of State for War. A Committee of Imperial Defence was instituted in 1901; and the Imperial General Staff, set up in 1909, was designed to coordinate the defence plans of the United Kingdom with those of the self-governing British Dominions, i So far as the Royal Navy was concerned, although the First Lord of the Admiralty was a political appointee, the practical control of the Service was in the bands of the First Sea Lord—a senior naval officered the four subordinate Sea Lords, who shared responsibility for everything from planning to scientific re- starch. They were supported by a small Naval intelligence Division, which had been instituted in february of 1887.
With the steady expansion of conflict and the means °f waging it, involving a far more complicated system °f logistics for its support, there arose a persistent tendency for the higher echelons of the General Staff t0 proliferate until the whole structure lay under the threat of becoming top-heavy and unwieldy. This was ! Putticularly true of Imperial Germany’s Gross Generals- H which as early as 1821 had been released from Subordination to the War Ministry and accorded an 'dependent status directly under the Monarch. More- °v«, there was a tendency for the members of the ^neralstab to become not so much a class apart as a ^finite caste, a state of affairs which did little to endear 'bem to the ordinary run of the Army.
Elsewhere, the "top brass” was invariably called upon o function under lay control, exercised by a Clvilian minister in time of peace or a Parliamentary War Cabinet in time of conflict.
That the United States was one of the last of the 'hajor powers to adopt the institution of a General Staff
T>e list occasion on which this occurred was in the Franco-Prussian War
1870-71, when Frederick of Prussia and Napoleon III headed their Relive forces. The Crown Prince of Germany held the nominal command ^Jn Army Group in World War I.
is less surprising than characteristic of certain beliefs and prejudices peculiar to a large number of the American people, to whom the concept of a regular standing army has always been anathema. As Daniel Boorstin has so cogently pointed out, "the belief that American wars would always be fought by 'embattled farmers’ was rooted in the earliest facts of American life.” Hence the fact that on the morrow of victory in the War of Independence, as Colonel R. Ernest Dupuy tells us, all that remained in the way of a standing military force was "twenty-five privates to guard the stores at Fort Pitt and fifty-five to guard the stores at West Point”.
In the post War of Secession period, an Army of 53,000 Officers and men were deliberately located well out of public gaze, in distant garrisons and remote frontier posts, which Dupuy describes as "little islands of isolation”. There was no General Staff, although, in a relatively few years, the conflict with Spain was clearly to demonstrate the urgent need for one. It was President McKinley’s appointment of the brilliant, farsighted, if sometimes irascible Elihu Root to the post of Secretary of War which paved the way for a thoroughgoing reform of the Army’s administrative system, which included the institution of both a General Staff, and, by General Order No. 155, of an Army War College. By 1903, the U. S. Army had acquired a Chief of Staff, at the head of a planning and administrative
organization as smooth-running and competent as any of its European counterparts.
Equally, the Spanish American War, leading to the victor’s acquisition of Caribbean bases, the Philippines, and other Pacific possessions, whose safe guardianship demanded the construction of the Panama Canal, led to a comparable expansion of the Navy, and of the staff structure by which—under the supervision of a civilian Secretary—it was operated and administered; with Congress exercising ultimate control by virtue of its retention of the purse strings in its own hands.
As Clausewitz was at pains to emphasize, "the distinction between politics and strategy diminishes as the point of view is raised. At the summit politics and strategy are one.” But the degree to which a civilian minister should be encouraged to override the counsel of his professional advisers, or impose his own decisions on those charged with the responsibility of carrying the general policy determined upon into effect, is open to serious debate. As Spencer Wilkinson so cogently pointed out, "a nation that is inclined to war requires men of war in its government, and the place for them is in the Cabinet. The practice of having a civilian minister inside the Cabinet with all the authority, and a soldier (or sailor) with all the knowledge and experience outside the Cabinet, was devised for electioning purposes and not for war.”
It has always been possible to maintain this anomaly on the grounds that it is in conformity with the principles of democracy and the tenets of representational government. For all that, during the course of the War between the States, with General Grant’s arrival in Washington in March of 1864, President Lincoln was at pains to inform him, "The particulars of your plan of campaign I neither know nor seek to know. I wish not to obtrude any constraints or restraints upon you.”
Yet it would be a boldly foolish man who suggest^ that the United States is, or ever has been, anything but a democracy, or that Abraham Lincoln was anything but a thoroughly democratic President.
Warfare—sea warfare in particular—can only ^ waged with success if a truly free hand be accord^ the responsible Commander, and his staff charged with the conduct of the actual operation. Or as the old naval adage has it, "Pilot’s advice, but Captain’s orders.
In short, "the statesman has nothing in his gift but disaster as soon as he leaves his own business of creating or obviating wars, and endeavors to conduct them.”* When Secretary Monroe ceased his unhelpful interference and departed with some precipitancy from the stricken field of Bladensburg, on that fateful August morning of 1814, he was heard to mutter, "The conduct of military affairs should be left to military men. Unfortunately, this fundamental truth had dawned on him a little late.
Finally, it is as well to bear in mind General George C. Marshall’s pronunciamento that, "History has repeatedly proved that it is not with the '"Brass Hats but with the brass heads that the real danger lies.” That should be inlaid over the portico of ever) parliament-house the wide world over, in letters of shining brass.
* General Sir Ian Hamilton, A Staff Officer’s Scrap Book.
Major Hargreaves was graduated from Cheltenham College in 190t ttt the Royal Military College at Sandhurst. His pre-1914 service included dun in India and Egypt. During World War I, he was wounded twice, in Inland in Gallipoli. Awarded the Military Cross in 1916, mentioned in d‘s patches in 1918, he was retired in 1920 and began the serious study 0 history that is the foundation for his reputation as one of the outstandiof British writers on military and naval subjects. His writings include Narrow Seas, This Happy Breed, The Enemy at the Gate, Onlooker at ^Jl and The Bloodyhacks, as well as many articles in British and Ameticin journals.
Levitation
Shortly after the First World War, I was serving in a light cruiser in the Baltic. The Russian charts were not very reliable in those days, and we ran aground on a reef. The bows were nearly high and dry, but the stern was still afloat. After some discussion with the captain, the commander mustered the whole ship’s company right aft on the quarterdeck.
"Now,” the commander said. "I’m going to jump the ship off”
The engines were put to full astern, and the commander continued: "You must all act in unison. When I give the order, 'one,’ lift your toes. When I say 'two,’ bend your knees. At the command 'three,’ jump in the air, and when I say 'four,’ come down.
We floated off safely.
—Contributed by B. McNally (The Naval Institute will pay $10.00 for each anecdote published in the Proceedings.)
[1]The tribunes were divided into sets of two, each pair alternating command of a Legion for a specified period, usually of two months.
[2]A title subsequently abbreviated to Major-General, f Cromwell always "did himself well” in a military sense, and for his
Scottish campaign of 1650 he appointed no less than 20 of these Aides to accompany him.