What mainly was wrong with our generalship was the system which put
the High Command into the hands of a group of men belonging to the old
school of war, unable, by reason of their age and traditions, to get
away from rigid methods and to become elastic in face of new
conditions.
Our Staff College had been hopelessly inefficient in its system of
training, if I am justified in forming such an opinion from specimens
produced by it, who had the brains of canaries and the manners of
Potsdam. There was also a close corporation among the officers of the
Regular Army, so that they took the lion's share of staff
appointments, thus keeping out brilliant young men of the new armies,
whose brain-power, to say the least of it, was on a higher level than
that of the Sandhurst standard. Here and there, where the
unprofessional soldier obtained a chance of high command or staff
authority, he proved the value of the business mind applied to war,
and this was seen very clearly--blindingly--in the able generalship of
the Australian Corps, in which most of the commanders, like Generals
Hobbs, Monash, and others, were men in civil life before the war.
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