Misfit and unfit sorted at Blois—Clan again—What to do with the "dodo"—Making good after Blois—Its significance to the regular—The fear of Blois in its effect on the reservist—Faults of reserve officers—Feeling of the medicos—Staff propaganda—Getting to troops—Staff and line—Slow weeding out.

When the promotion disease was most acute, however, the word promotion never exercised over the army the spell of the word Blois. Though Blois was not mentioned in the press, it was as familiar in the secrecy of the army world as Verdun, Ypres, Paris, or ChÂteau-Thierry. Every officer who was uncertain whether or not he was pleasing his superior stood in fear of Blois, which was the synonym of failure. Downcast generals and lieutenants traveled together from the front to Blois.

What was to be done with officers who broke down in health, or who did not come up to the standards required in their work? They might be sent home; but white-haired generals and colonels who had reputations as able officers in time of peace were not wanted airing their grievances on the steps of the Army and Navy Building in Washington. There was an injustice, too, in placing on any officer the stigma of having been sent back from France, which would react on the many capable officers who were recalled from France in order to apply their experience abroad in furthering our preparations at home. Then, too, we needed the service of any officer who could do any kind of work in France. In the majority of instances it was not so much a question of being unfit as being "misfit." The thing was to put round pegs in round holes.

The town of Blois near Tours became a depot for classification and reassignment of officers who had been relieved by their superiors. A Leavenworth man who was in charge had the power to reduce an officer in rank if he thought this were warranted. He secretly interrogated the arriving officer, who was told that his record would not be considered against him; his superiors might have been unjust to him; if he had "stubbed his toe," this did not mean that he would do it again. Though the plan was as logical as the transfer of an employee of a business from the manufacturing to the selling branch, the object of the attention felt the humiliation none the less. Despite all propaganda to alleviate its association in the minds of fellow-officers, "being sent to Blois" had only one generally accepted significance, which was wickedly unfair to many a victim. There were superiors who followed their subordinates to Blois; while the subordinates were later promoted, they sank into the desuetude of a routine position. Indigestion, a burst of temper, a case of nerves, of prejudice, of finding a scapegoat for a senior's mistakes, might start an officer away from the front with his unhappy travel order. I knew of instances where it was a tribute to the officer that he had been sent: a tribute to his honest effort, his initiative, his unselfish spirit in trying to do his duty under an incompetent, irascible superior, who himself should not have received the consideration of Blois but been sent to a labor battalion, in the hope that by a few hours of physical effort a day he might have earned a part of the pay and the pains his country had wasted on him.

Considering how valuable was the regular's professional training for combat, and considering too that only half of the regular officers ever reached France, it was surprising how many regular officers were sent from the front to Blois. The percentage of regulars who failed in action was said to be as large as the percentage of reserves. The Leavenworth group, aiming to be impartial in the ruthlessness which they thought their duty, declared that when a man failed to make good he went, whether regular or reserve.

"If there's a reserve officer who can do my job better than I can, I want him to have it," said a regular colonel of thirty-five. "I'll give all I have and do my best wherever I am sent. That's service and duty. My country thought I was fit to be an officer. It paid me to serve where I could serve best. What is the use of holding to the clannish idea that any regular is better than a reserve? That isn't the idea of efficiency. If a man who has served only six months is better than a man who has served thirty years, the old regular ought not to growl. He ought to feel ashamed. He is beholden to his country for having given him a livelihood for thirty years. He could not have earned as good a one in any other occupation."

He was the same officer who had spoken his convictions after my remarks at the maneuver at Leavenworth. Of humble origin, proving the democratic test by his conduct, he was an honor to the profession of arms,—as he would have been to any profession. The whole army recognized his ability. Of course no reserve officer or National Guard officer could be better than he; his subordinates were proud to serve under him. If his reward could have been judged by a monetary standard, he earned all the pay he had ever received from the government by one month's service in France. He would return to a major's rank under mediocre officers, whose work he now directed from the staff.

Had he made the remarks which I have just quoted to reserve officers when any regulars were present, even his ability would not have saved him from the charge of disloyalty to the clan. So the strain on class A men in the staff or in the line was heavy. As Leavenworth men, the Leavenworth men stood together, thought the observing reserves—and with them, of course, I include National Guard officers—while the regulars, forming up against the magic inner circle, stood together as regulars in the magic outer circle.

The human equation and friendships were bound to enter into the honest effort at impartiality. Here was a brigadier-general of fifty-five or sixty who had been your commanding officer at a post. He was hopelessly superannuated. There was no place of responsibility in keeping with his rank where his services would not be fatal to efficiency. No one desired to hurt his feelings. Diplomacy must arrange cushions for him. He was given a car, and aides, and sent about on inspections, to make reports which were received with serious attention, or he was given a first-class officer as chief of staff. One of these amiable "dodos," as the regulars called them among themselves—never in the presence of a reserve officer—complained, so the story ran, that "another general had a cut-glass vase for flowers in his limousine, and he had none." The strife for cars befitting rank was almost as vigorous as for promotion, while some regimental commanders rode in side-cars or cars of a "low rank"; but they, who passed through shell-fire and bumped over shell-craters, would not have exchanged their commands for the most luxurious of limousines flying along good roads out of sound of the guns. It was hard, indeed, that upstarts from Leavenworth in the name of John J. Pershing should consign to Blois, and from Blois to a base section of the S. O. S., veterans of thirty and forty years' service in the regulars. There was another method applied on one occasion, when a division commander told a brigadier who had mismanaged his command that his brigade would be cared for in the morrow's attack, and that he would have his chance to redeem himself in the manner of a brave man, by going "over the top." He went, of course, winning that respect which is given every man, regardless of age or ability, for unflinching courage. Others might have been given the same opportunity to win gold letters in the memorial hall at West Point as an enduring epitaph; but there were strong arguments against this. The incompetent were not fit for the serious business of combat organizations; men's lives could not be trusted to their direction. In case of death, the officer's widow would receive a small pension, while if he survived and was retired, he would receive retired pay enough to assure comfort to his family.

The human equation reappears. A reservist was a stranger, a regular might be an old comrade, calling on a senior's affection and the loyalty to clan, when the latter considered sending an officer to Blois. Still other influences might make a regular's shortcomings more easily forgiven than a reservist's. If a regular did not succeed in carrying out orders, as he was a professional, failure must be accepted as unavoidable. In a word, if Ed or John with whom you had served could not put the trains through or take a machine-gun nest, then it was impossible.

There was no such personal standard of professionalism to apply to a reservist. Success must be the only standard for him. On the other hand, I did not envy some Leavenworth men, who leaned over backward in being resolute to comrades, when they should revert to their original rank and be once more serving under officers whom they had commanded from the staff. "He's got it in for me," was an expression sometimes heard, as you will hear it in different forms in any class community. It was an excuse for having been sent to Blois. Meanwhile, new grudges were being formed. It was dramatic when a regular officer, who had been sent to Blois, upon reassignment to the front won his brigadiership in a brilliant action; but not so dramatic as when a National Guard brigadier, who had had his stars removed at Blois, refused a colonelcy in the rear, received a majority in the line, returned as a major to his own brigade, and was killed in leading his battalion gallantly in a charge.

The heartbreaks among the regulars must be more lasting than among the reservists. War was the regular's profession. He returned to live with his reputation in the army world. The reservists returned to the civil world, where the war would soon be forgotten. This accounted for the greediness for promotion, which throughout the lives of regular officers would be the mark of their careers, while the guerdon of the future for the reservist was success in another occupation.

"Do these reservists want to jump in and take everything away from us, when they are in the army only for the war?" as a veteran regular complained when he was not receiving the promotion which he thought was his due.

The more subordinates you had, the more chance of promotion.

"Get a lot of young officers around you, form a bureau, and you will get a colonelcy in the new tables of organization," said one regular officer to another, both efficient, upstanding men.

Toward the end we did not lack officers in numbers for service in the rear. Our problem was to prevent unnecessary expansion in superfluities. Our American energy was under pressure. The thing for regular or reserve was to show that he was as busy as any Leavenworth man. Both the British and French said we had too many typewriters, and were prone to excess motion, despite our wonderful accomplishment. It was an obvious criticism, by officers in an established organization, of an organization which was in the throes of creation. Big men might work with a purpose; but little men might be flailing out their vitality on old straw, in order to make a "show" before the senior who might either promote them or send them to Blois.

One day a reserve officer suggested to a regular senior, who had been laboring long and hard over a problem, a solution which could be expressed in half a dozen lines, leaving the execution of the policy stated to subordinates. That conscientious regular trained in Leavenworth industry shook his head. He sent in ten pages, after burning the midnight oil, which finally went up to Harbord himself. Harbord dictated a few sentences which duplicated the reservist's suggestion. "In line with my idea!" said the regular. There was no reason why the reservist should expect credit. He was in service to help in any way he could to hasten the end of the war.

I have in mind one regular staff chief, who won promotion and great credit because of his able subordinates. "He never knew," as one of the subordinates said. I am not sure that he was entirely unconscious, for he said: "These reservists have a lot of ideas. Of course they don't know anything about war." By the time the serious fighting began, they knew more than he knew. They were shrewd enough to let him think that their knowledge was his.

Of course, he always held over them the fear of Blois and the promise of promotion. That fear of Blois killed many an officer's initiative. It made independent men into courtiers for favor from men for whom in their hearts they had no respect. The weak tried to play safe, as they studied a senior's characteristics. Lack of psychologic contact between the army post world and the world of the nation as a whole, and overwork, overworry, and lack of appreciation of their efforts sent many officers to Blois. It was one sure way of having a brief holiday. Young reservists especially became discouraged and fatalistic when they found that they were incapable of ever pleasing an irascible senior. Others who had the right kind of superior developed under his encouraging and understanding direction. All was a gamble in how commanding officers themselves developed under the test of war.

A certain suspicion of civilians of whom they knew so little had its inevitable influence in keeping regulars in all the important positions, even in the S. O. S. The army had to take the responsibility, and the army must therefore keep authority in its own hands. Was it surprising, considering the life they had led, that the regulars should think that civilians could not understand the honor and the ethics of the service which they had so jealously guarded against politicians and a misinformed public? Civilians were shrewd in worldly ways; they might use their positions for profit; they might inculcate bad gospel. I heard of no peculation in that enormous and scattered organization, buying such gigantic quantities of supplies. We may have been extravagant, but we were clean—very clean, compared to the political contracts of Civil War times. The regulars kept to the honest traditions, even if some of their officers had become "dead from the chin up," to use a regular army expression. As an observer I dare indulge in only a few of the regulars' tart sayings about one another, sayings which of themselves were symptomatic of our restless energy for achievement, and of standards which were formed on achievement rather than pretension. If there were any graft, it was that of desire for power, of travel orders to see the front and France, and of other human weaknesses which were an inevitable accompaniment of active ambition.

It was my fortune to see the staff and the supply systems, to go in and out of the different headquarters, and on up to the front itself. I had the keys to the doors of all the many compartments, each immured by the nerve-racking pressure of its industry and exposure to death. I also saw the other armies at work. I knew the faults of reserves as well as of regulars. There were young officers of the line, good in scholarship and drill at the training camps, who, not from any want of courage but from inability, failed under fire. Floating in on the wave of the quartermaster and ordnance corps in the hasty granting of commissions was many a major and captain who was worthless. Some had never earned in their occupations in civil life the pay they were receiving as officers. These were most ambitious for promotion. They were always grumbling that their organizing capacity was not recognized. To the regular they were examples in point, proving the wisdom of expert control to the last degree.

Other reserve officers who were specialists in a business or profession, now that they were at war, considered it a hardship to have to do the same work that they had been doing in civil life. Others by their propensities for unbridled talk offended the regular ethics of secretiveness. Others who had been regarded as men of ability in their occupations were living on their reputations no less than some of the older regulars. Under army conditions, in poor quarters on foreign soil, they seem to have had a further relapse. Men of reputation in civil life, who were used to having their work known through the press, once they were in uniform felt their helpless anonymity. Leavenworth, in its unfamiliarity with civil life, sticking fast to its prerogatives and its theory of war, said that all reserves, line and staff, should be given a hell's trial, and that those who survived would one day receive their reward—after all the regulars had been looked after, as the reservists remarked.

Among the reserve officers were the physicians and surgeons, the most notable we had, in one of the most progressive of professions, who came to the aid of the army medical corps, which had to expand its organization with all the suddenness of the quartermaster corps. The standards of admittance to the army medical corps had been high; it had expanded its vision in sanitation in the Philippines, Cuba, and the Canal Zone; its practice was with soldiers in time of peace. The reserve medico, whether a great surgeon, a laboratory expert, or head of a hospital, was subject to a regular senior, often much younger than he, whose capacities might be first-class, or as inferior as his prejudices were numerous. No experts from civil life, in their sacred desire for efficiency, could feel the restrictions on their initiative more than the reserve medical officers; but be it said that we did build hospitals, we did equip them well, and, with General Pershing's resolute support, the exacting health discipline included precautions against that disease which has ever been the curse of armies.

Leavenworth would have no advertising. Not only for reasons of military secrecy would censorship have no names mentioned, but also in keeping with the ethics of regular officers that publicity was unbecoming—a theory that was fine in the abstract, but in the application had to deal with human nature. The names of the Leavenworth men themselves, holding the fates of division generals in their hands, were unknown to the public and to the mass of the army. Not reports in the press, glorifying a unit or its commander, but the military judgment of superiors was to form the criterion of praise. Never, indeed, had such power come to a group of men as to the graduates of that sequestered school in the wheat fields of Kansas, in charge of two million men. It was interesting to watch how rapidly some of them grew under responsibility, how used they became to accepting power as a matter of course; and equally interesting how others remained scholars of Leavenworth, their vision still shut within its walls.

They directed policy to keep up morale. Their propaganda never forgot the army; and finally included, to my regret, that of hate and of atrocities accepted on hearsay. The Stars and Stripes, the A. E. F. newspaper, brought to France all the headlines, the snappy paragraphs, the cartoons, the slang, which knit California to Maine, to arouse our enthusiasm for the war. Our communiquÉs, much studied and revised, had facility in concealment in place of outright prevarication, which was the prevailing fashion to keep up the spirits of the public behind the army by assurances that it was the enemy who was making the mistakes and suffering the heavier casualties. Fashions in uniform received much attention, too, from those with that inclination of mind. The overseas cap, without a visor to keep sun or rain out of the eyes, was none the less distinctive. We might have designed a better one the day we started troops to Europe, if our staff at home had had information about European climatic conditions; but the number of things in which we might have shown prevision are too numerous to mention. They do not count now; for the war was won. The Allied communiquÉs were right. Our victory proves that the enemy made all the mistakes.

Considering the many regulars used in organization and instruction in France, the number of regular officers who served at the front must be, if exception is made of the youngsters from West Point and the provisional regular officers, relatively small. Reacting to a "million men rising to arms in their shirt-sleeves," and to the popular conception of leadership as an officer rushing at the head of his men in a charge, Leavenworth held strictly to the idea of the chessboard system, which kept commanders, including regimental, in touch with their communications, instead of leading charges, the better to direct the tactical movements of their units. In the National Guard and National Army, the majority of the majors as well as the captains and lieutenants were from civil life; so, too, were the captains and lieutenants in the regular divisions, always excepting the regular officers, who did not average one out of six in the average regular battalion.

No army staff was more given to the policy of alternating between line and staff than ours. Every officer on the staff felt that he had a right to lead a regiment or brigade before the war was over. Transfers were frequent. The result was gratifying to individual ambition. A line officer who had just learned field command took the place of a staff officer who was just becoming expert in his branch of staff work. The newcomer had to start in learning fundamentals when his predecessor had been under a strain to keep up with the rapid developments; but how could you deny Tom, who was once your lieutenant in the Philippines, his desire, after three months' confinement, to be "in it" for a while at the front? When he showed peculiar fitness for office work, the British and French would have kept him in an office. He had his daily exercise, and his periods of leave when he might recuperate from the mental strain, which was all the worse for a man whose heart was with the troops. The Germans, least of all inclined to consider the personal equation, had interchangeable corps staffs. When one became stale, it went into rest in the same manner as a division of infantry, while a fresh staff took its place. Their system was the same as having two office forces, interchanging at intervals, in a business where the offices were open night and day. We had not enough officers to allow holidays. All must serve double the usual office hours in any concern, Sundays included—work as long as there was work to do, snatching intervals of sleep. In this the Leavenworth men, I repeat, set all an industrious example. Their greatest fault first and last was lack of psychologic touch with the people of their country. They were too remote from the troops. "But you forget the men," as the C.-in-C. used to say to the chess-players.

No staff can ever be popular with the line; and no line can ever satisfy the staff which works out its plans of attack on paper. The staff serves at a headquarters, and the line in the open under fire. The difference of the human equation is that between security and comfort, and death and hardship, which no philosophy can bridge. A staff officer who appeared at the front always looked conspicuously neat and conspicuously wise, as exotic as a man in a morning coat on a cowman's ranch. The line officer in earth-stained uniform, lean from his effort, eyes glistening with the fever of battle dangers shared with his men, as he entered a staff room to report was equally exotic in his surroundings, while he had a personal dignity whose chivalrous appeal no one could resist.

Yet someone must do staff work. Some directing minds must arrange for the movement of the troops and their transport according to a system, and assure the presence of supplies and ammunition; someone must sit near the centering nerves of wire and wireless and telephone and messengers, and maneuver the units in battle. The more comfortable they were, the better they did their work, inasmuch as there was no reason for their sleeping on the ground when they could have shelter.

Everyone familiar with the statics of war on the Western Front knew that you might have a good lunch at a division or corps headquarters, and two or three hours later you might be floundering in the mud, gas mask on, under bombardment. If you spent a day in the trenches, your feelings became those of the men who were there, you knew the nonsense that was written for public consumption in order to keep the public stalwart for the war, and you held visitors and staff officers who came sight-seeing in the kind of humorous contempt that those who "busted bronchos" held the tenderfoot in the days when realities in the wild west resembled the moving-picture shows of contemporary times. The officer relieved from staff duty for the front was subject to the same influence. He was not long in command of troops before he began abusing the staff for its preposterous orders, while the line officer assigned to the staff was soon talking about the incapability of the line to carry out his directions.

Gradually slipping the round pegs into round holes and the square pegs into square holes, floundering and stumbling, but keeping on, the process of organization continued, while the resolute will of the Commander-in-Chief laid down the lines of policy. For him to give an order, as I have said, did not mean that it would be carried out. He himself was the victim of the system: one man dependent upon others for the execution of his plans, and largely dependent too upon inspections by others for reports of progress. His adjutants could form chains of influence of which he was unconscious. "Insubordination" is the most glaring of military offenses, next to timidity under fire. It cannot be openly practised; but within the bounds of any closed society the effects of insubordination can be gained. To trace responsibility in time of action is laborious through channels where officers familiar with the craft of "passing the buck" may spin red tape endlessly, though on other occasions they cut it with facility. Yet the phrase, "the C.-in-C. wants it," was the shibboleth of power. In war a democracy is right to confer autocracy. This means efficiency in concentration according as the character of its people is sound and efficient. The C.-in-C. and all progressive officers had to fight the influences inherent in autocracy, which eventually make permanent autocracy effete through formality and intrigue.

The leaven was working; we were passing through the inevitable evolution which had been foreseen. The officers who had come through the schools and training camps, watchful if silent, had learned their fundamentals thoroughly and up to date, without having to unlearn pre-war teachings. They were finding, as the Canadians and Australians found, that, once on the inside, the art of making war was not such a profound technical secret as they had thought. They were now able to judge their seniors by professional as well as human standards. Regulars, of the type who felt their feet slipping, were naturally tenacious in keeping up the mystery, which was the capital of the inefficient. Regulars who were sure of themselves—having learned more of war in six months than in all their service—gladdened at the prospect of the fulfillment of their dream of a great army, which was equal to any in the world. They felt the fewness of their numbers on the top of this tidal wave of the nation's manhood in arms, which they must ride. An army has its public opinion, that of the mass of officers and men. Great leaders realize that this is supreme. Moltke courted it no less than Napoleon; Hindenburg sought to hold it, and lost it. The American army was becoming the country's army—the country as a whole trained to arms. The youth and the brains of the country making war its business had too large resources in leadership, once it had learned the technique of leadership, to submit to class rule. Your old regular sergeant, your old regular colonel must yield to the survival of the fittest in the competition of the millions. At the end of the Meuse-Argonne battle, excluding at the most twenty per cent of the regulars of sufficient rank for battalion and regimental command, I should say that there were five officers from civil life who were better than any regular in leading a battalion, and two or three better than any regular in leading a regiment. With the reservists I include the National Guard officers, though they had had military experience before the war. Arms was not their regular calling; but they were to prove that they were not amateurs. Our plans, as I have said, until the late summer all looked forward to a spring campaign. In the winter that preceded it there would have been many heartbreaks among the regulars; for the evolution no longer held in check would have had its fruition. The tidal wave would have broken through the barriers; we should have had many colonels and brigadiers from among the young officers from the training camps and the National Guard.

Called to the Meuse-Argonne battle, without adequate preparation or equipment, our organization imperfect, remarkable as it was considering the circumstances, the burden of the leadership which meant success, as the account already shows, was with the officers from civil life. They led the combat units against the machine-gun nests. Did promotion matter for the moment to that sergeant who took over the platoon when his lieutenant was mashed by a shell or received a machine-gun bullet in the heart? Did it matter to the second lieutenant who was the only commissioned officer left to lead a company? To the boy captain, who had fought his way up from the ranks, or had not finished his college course before he went to a training-camp, as undaunted he took charge of a battalion and continued the attack? Staffs, sitting beside the telephones, waited on their reports. Did promotion matter to the men? I am weary of writing of staff and officers, who must have their part in the narrative. The men! We have heard much of them. We shall hear more. They won the battle—a soldier's battle. They saved generals and staff. It is their part which sent an old observer of wars home in pride and gratitude.