244 WARFARE IN THE HUMAN BODY 



he learns that somebody a year his senior is not only 

 likely to tell him to do a thing but to see that it gets done. 

 In training for the army there is, of course, a great advance 

 of thought over a school, for you come here duly prepared 

 to surrender your personalities or part of them. But 

 even so it is in many cases a very difficult process. You 

 recognize that it is necessary, but perhaps you do not see the 

 mental side of things which makes it necessary. Yet to 

 know why makes all things easy. I dare say you have 

 already compared in your minds the curious semi-hostility 

 there often is between the combatant branches and the 

 Staff of an army with that between schoolmasters and their 

 pupils of which I spoke just now. The masters initiate 

 and carry on a process of limiting natural freedom. The 

 resulting hostility, or armed neutrality, is, in its way, a 

 good thing. It inspires action and emulation. When a 

 thing is inevitable, if it can be turned to good so much the 

 better. Obstacles balking fools the wise make pivots of 

 victory. Since the Staff of the army is the brain of the 

 army it is obviously different in its functions from those 

 who do the active work. When an officer with red tabs 

 on his uniform and a red band round his cap comes to the 

 trenches, looks at them, makes a few casual remarks, 

 goes away again, and you are presently told that every- 

 thing done has been done wrong and has to be done again, 

 there is, of course, a kind of revolt against it. Sometimes 

 you may say bitterly that the Staff has not got to do the 

 work. But possibly you may recognize as a compensation 

 that it could not do your work if it tried. I am sure that it 

 could not after it has been trained on its own special lines 

 for any length of time. But you must remember that this 

 partial incapacity is a sacrifice to efficiency in the organ- 

 ization to which you all belong. The Staff make their 



