The performance of Australian non professional officers and generals during World War I was given high praise by David Lloyd George in his War Memoirs (London 1933-36). He stated:
“Ought we to have interfered in the realm of strategy? This is one of the most perplexing anxieties of the Government of a nation at war. Civilians have had no instruction, training or experience in the principle of war, and to that extent are complete amateurs in the methods of waging war. It is idle, however, to pretend that intelligent men whose minds are concentrated for years on one task learn nothing about it by daily contact with its difficulties and way to overcome them………But strategy is not entirely a military problem. There is in it a considerable element of high politics….. Generally speaking, the argument of the high commands in the war for their claim to be the sole judges of military policy was put far too high by them and their partisans. War is not an exact science like chemistry or mathematics where it would be presumption on the part of anyone ignorant of its first rudiments to express an opinion contrary to those who had thoroughly mastered its principles. War is an art, proficiency in which depends more on experience than on study, and more on natural aptitude and judgment than on either……”
(Published by the team of TERRITORIALS)
No comments:
Post a Comment