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"No man in this war," he said, with a sweeping assertion, "has ever
been killed by the bayonet unless he had his hands up first." And,
broadly speaking, I think he was right, in spite of the Director of
Training, who was extremely annoyed with me when I quoted this
authority.


XX

I met many other generals who were men of ability, energy, high sense
of duty, and strong personality. I found them intellectually, with few
exceptions, narrowly molded to the same type, strangely limited in
their range of ideas and qualities of character.
"One has to leave many gaps in one's conversation with generals," said
a friend of mine, after lunching with an army commander.
That was true. One had to talk to them on the lines of leading
articles in The Morning Post. Their patriotism, their knowledge of
human nature, their idealism, and their imagination were restricted to
the traditional views of English country gentlemen of the Tory school.
Anything outside that range of thought was to them heresy, treason, or
wishy-washy sentiment.


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