CHAPTER IX

THE INTERNAL ECONOMY OF THE ARMY

Given such a conscript army as can be seen in working in any Continental nation, there is a very good reason for keeping the rate of pay for the rank and file down to as low a standard as possible, for the State concerned in the upkeep of a conscript army puts all, or in any case the greater part, of its male citizens through the mill of military service, and not only puts them through, but compels them to go through. It thus stands to reason that, as the men serve by compulsion, there is no need to offer good rates of pay as an inducement to serve; further, it is to the interest of the State concerned to keep down the expense attendant on the maintenance of its army as much as possible, and for these two reasons, if for no other, the rate of pay in Continental armies is remarkably small.

With a volunteer army, however, the matter must be looked at in a different light. It is in the interest of the State, of course, that expenses in connection with its army should be kept as low as possible, but there the analogy between conscript and volunteer rates of pay ends. If the right class of man is to be induced to volunteer for service, he must be offered a sufficient rate of pay to make military service worth his while--in time of peace, at any rate. The ideal rate of pay would be attained if the State would consider itself, so far as its army is in question, in competition with all other employers of labour, and would offer a rate of pay commensurate with the services demanded of its employees. By that method the right class of man would be persuaded to come forward in sufficient numbers, and the Army could be maintained at strength without trouble.

The British Army is the only voluntary one among the armies of the Western world, and for some time past it has experienced difficulty in obtaining a sufficiency of recruits to keep it up to strength, as was evidenced by the series of recruiting advertisements in nearly all daily papers of the kingdom with which the year 1914 opened. Statistics go to prove that recruiting is not altogether a matter of arousing patriotism, but is dependent on the state of the labour market to a very great extent. In the years following on the South African war, there was a larger percentage of unemployed in the kingdom than at normal times, and consequently recruiting flourished; men of the stamp that the Army wants, finding nothing better to do, and often being uncertain where the next meal was to come from, enlisted, and the Army had no trouble in maintaining itself at strength, although the rate of pay that it offered was lower than that earned, in many cases, by the ordinary unskilled labourer. Gradually, however, commercial conditions began to improve, and for the past year or two, in consequence of a very small percentage of unemployment among the labouring classes, recruiting has suffered--the Army does not offer as much as the ordinary civilian employer, either in wages or conditions of life, and consequently men will not enlist as long as they can get something to do in a regular way. Hence the War Office advertisements, which had very little effect on the recruiting statistics, and were wrongly conceived so far as appealing to the right class of man was in question. It was not till Lord Kitchener had assumed control of the War Office that the advertisements emanating from that establishment made a real personal appeal to the recruit; the two events may have been coincidence, for the war has pushed up recruiting as a war always does; again, there may have been something in the fact that Kitchener, as well as being an ideal organiser of men, is a great psychologist.

However this may be, the fact remains that, although the War Office by the mere fact of its advertising has entered the labour market as a competitor with civilian employers, it has not yet offered any inducement equal to that offered by civilian employers. The rate of pay for the rank and file is still under two shillings a day, with lodging and partial board, for in time of peace the rations issued to the soldier do not form a complete allowance of food, and even the messing allowance is in many cases insufficient to provide sufficient meals--the soldier has to supplement both rations and messing out of his pay. When all allowances and needs have been accounted for, the amount of pay that a private soldier can fairly call his own, to spend as he likes, is about a shilling a day--and civilian employment, as a rule, offers more than that. Moreover, modern methods of warfare call for a more intelligent and better educated man than was the case fifty years ago; the soldier of to-day, as has already been remarked, has not only to be able to obey, but also to exercise initiative; a better class of man is required, and though the factor of numbers is still the greatest factor in any action that may be fought between opposing armies, the factor of intelligence and elementary scientific knowledge is one that grows in importance year by year. The mass of recruits, in time of peace, is drawn from among the unemployed unskilled labourers of the country; though, by the rate of pay given, the country effects a certain saving, this is more than balanced by the difficulty of educating and training these men--to say nothing of the expense of it. A higher rate of pay would attract a better class of man and provide a more intelligent army, one of greater value to the State. And, even assuming that the class of man obtained at present is as good as need be, still the rate of pay is insufficient; the work men are called on to perform, the responsibilities that are entailed on them in the course of their work, deserve a higher rate of pay than these men obtain at present.

An illustration of this will serve far better than mere statement of the fact. It is well known that for years past there has been some difficulty in obtaining a sufficiency of officers for cavalry regiments, but what is not so well known is that, when a troop of cavalry is short of a lieutenant to lead it at drill and assume responsibility for its working, the troop-sergeant takes command and control of the troop. At the best, the pay of the troop-sergeant cannot be reckoned at more than four shillings a day, and on that amount of salary--twenty-eight shillings a week--he is given charge and control of somewhere about thirty men, together with horses, saddlery, and other Government property to the value of not less than £1800. For the safety and good order of this amount of property he is almost entirely responsible, as well as being charged with the superintendence, instruction, and control of the thirty men or more who comprise the troop under his command.

The fact is that the world has moved forward tremendously during the past thirty or forty years, while, except for small and inadequate changes in the rates of pay, the Army has stood still. Labour conditions have altered in every way, and the cost of living has increased, forcing up the wage rate. The Army has taken note of none of these things, but has gone on, as regards pay and allowances, in the way of forty years ago. The necessity for an advertising campaign proved that the old ways were beginning to fail, and efforts were being made to overcome the shortage of men without increasing the rates of pay--vain efforts, if statistics of the amount of recruiting done before and after the beginning of the advertising campaign count for anything.

We may leave these larger considerations to come down to a view of the interior working of a unit, its pay, feeding, and general life. All arrangements as regards pay for infantrymen are managed by the colour-sergeants of the companies, while in the cavalry and artillery the squadron or battery quartermaster-sergeants have control of the pay-sheets. These non-commissioned officers are charged with the business of drawing weekly the amount of pay required by their respective companies, squadrons, or batteries, and paying out the same to the men under the supervision of the company, squadron, or battery officers. The presence of the officer at the pay-table is a nominal business in most cases, and the non-commissioned officer does all the work, while in every case he is held responsible for any errors that may occur. Each man is given a stated weekly rate of pay, and at the end of each month there is a general settling up, at which the accounts of each man are explained to him; he is told what debts he has incurred to the regimental tailor, the bootmaker, or for new clothing that he has been compelled to purchase to make good deficiencies; in every unit each man is charged two or three pence a month--and sometimes more--by way of barrack damages, which includes the repair of broken windows, etc., and altogether the compulsory stoppages from pay generally amount to not less than two shillings per man per month.

The system of pay is a complicated one. As a bed-rock minimum there is a regular rate of pay of a shilling and a penny a day for an infantryman, and a penny or twopence a day more for the other arms of the service. On to this is added the messing allowance of threepence a day, which is spent for the men in supplementing their ration allowance of food, and never reaches them in coin at all; there is a clothing allowance, which goes to defray the expense attendant on the renewal of articles of attire; there is yet another allowance for the upkeep of clothing and kit; there is the proficiency pay to which each man becomes entitled after a certain amount of service, and which consists of varying grades according to the musketry standard and character of the man; this ranges from fourpence to sixpence a day; and then there is badge pay, which adds a penny or twopence a day to old soldiers’ pay so long as they behave themselves. The colour-sergeant or quartermaster-sergeant has to keep account of all these small items, and it is small matter for wonder that many a worried officer or non-com., puzzling his brains over the intricacies of a pay-sheet, expresses an earnest wish that the whole complicated system may be swept away, and a straightforward rate of pay for each man substituted.

The Army Pay Corps, a non-combatant branch of the service, is charged with the business of auditing and keeping accounts straight, and this corps forms the final court of appeal for all matters connected with the pay of the soldier. The Royal Warrant for Pay, a bulky volume published annually, is the manual by which the Pay Corps is guided to its decisions, and from which the harassed colour-sergeant or quartermaster-sergeant derives inspiration for his work.

In all units serving at home, and in most of those serving abroad, a system of messing is established regimentally to supplement the ration allowance. Rations for the soldier, by the way, consist in England of one pound of bread and three-quarters of a pound of meat with bone per day, and all else must be bought out of pay and messing allowance. In colonial stations the ration allowance is enlarged to include certain vegetables, and in India the scale is still more liberal, but it is obvious that the English ration of bread and meat is not sufficient for the needs of the soldier, nor will the official messing allowance of threepence per day per man altogether compensate for ration deficiencies. Beyond doubt, however, the provision of necessaries has been brought to a very fine art in the Army, and, with an efficient cook-sergeant in charge of the regimental cookhouses, and capable caterers to supervise purchases for the messing account, with an allowance of fourpence a day per man the rank and file can have a sufficiency of plain, wholesome food.

The sergeant-cook in charge of the cookhouses of each unit must have passed through a course at the Aldershot school of cookery before he can undertake the duties of his post, but he is the only trained cook in each unit. Men are chosen as company cooks or squadron cooks haphazard, and often with too little regard to their fitness for their posts. In spite of all disadvantages, though, the average of cooking in the Army is good, especially when one considers the unpromising material with which the cooks have to deal. The contract price for Army meat is not half that paid per pound by the civilian buyers; it is, of course, all foreign meat that is supplied in normal times.

While the single men of the Army draw their meat supplies daily, married quarters’ rations are drawn on stated days, and, as the majority of the occupants of the married quarters are non-commissioned officers and their wives, it follows naturally that, in getting their exact ration with regard to weight, they are given every consideration with regard to the quality of meat cut off from the lump. On married quarters’ days the troops get a surprisingly small allowance of meat and a surprisingly large allowance of bone, for the regulation governing supply enacts that “three-quarters of a pound of meat _with bone_” shall be allowed for each soldier. That “with bone” may mean that two-thirds of the allowance or more is bone, though the soldier has in this matter as well as in others the right of complaint if he considers that he is being subjected to injustice in any way. The quality of meat supplied, and its correct quantity, is supposed to constitute one of the cares of the orderly officer of the day, for the orderly officer, together with the quartermaster or the representative of the latter, is supposed to attend at the issue of rations of both bread and meat.

In this connection a word regarding the duties of the orderly officer will not be out of place. These duties are undertaken by the lieutenants and second lieutenants of each unit, who take turns of a day apiece as “orderly officer of the day.” It has already been remarked that an officer does not really begin to count in the life of a unit until he has attained to the rank of captain and to the experience gained by such length of service as makes him eligible for captaincy. In no one thing does this fact become so clear as the way in which the duty of orderly officer of the day is performed in the majority of units. It happens as a rule that a lieutenant performs his turn of orderly conscientiously and well; at times, however, it happens that a subaltern, impatient at the fiddling duties involved in the turn of orderly, regards complaints on the part of the men as trivial and annoying, neglects to see that real causes of grievance are properly remedied, and lays the foundations of deep dislike for himself on the part of the men of the unit. One of the duties falling to the orderly officer is that of visiting the dining-rooms of the regiment or battalion and inquiring in each room if the men have any complaints to make with regard to the quality or quantity of the food supplied. If any complaint is made, it should be at once investigated, and, if found justifiable, remedied.

But the subaltern doing orderly duty far too often does not know--because he has not troubled to learn--the way to set about remedying a just complaint; a very common form of reply to a complaint by the men is, “I will see about it,” and that is all that the men ever hear, while they are careful never to make a complaint to that particular officer again, since they know he is not to be depended on. The attitude of some junior officers towards the men making a complaint is at times one of suspicion; the officer seems to imagine that the man is doing it for amusement, and not until he has grown a little, and incidentally passed out from the rank in which he takes his turn as orderly officer, does he come to understand that men only make complaints to their officers about things which are absolutely beyond their own power to remedy. Frivolous or unjustifiable complaints, when proved to be such, are very heavily punished, and consequently men abstain as a rule from making them.

The orderly officer is not concerned alone with the food of the men; he is supposed to visit the barrack-rooms and see that everything is correct there; he has to visit the guard of his unit once by day and once by night, and see that the guard is correct and the articles in charge of the guard are complete according to the inventory on the guard-board; he is supposed to visit all the regimental artificers’ establishments once during the day to see that work is being carried on properly, and he is even concerned with the quality and issue of beer in the canteen, while at the end of his day’s duty he has to fill in and sign a report to the effect that he has performed all his duties effectively--whether he has or no. His work, correctly carried through, is no sinecure business.

Mention of the canteen takes us on to another point of military economy, that of supplies of varying kinds apart from the actual ration bread and meat. In each unit serving at home, a canteen is established for the supply to the troops of articles of the best possible quality at the lowest possible price “without limiting the right of the men to purchase” in other markets, according to King’s Regulations on the subject. In effect, however, the tenancy of a regimental canteen by a contractor is a virtual monopoly, and, unfortunately for the troops concerned, the monopoly is often made a rigid one. There is a “dry bar,” or grocery establishment, at which men can purchase cleaning materials for their kits and all articles of food that they require; there is a “coffee bar,” where suppers are sold to the men and cooked food generally is sold; and there is the “wet canteen,” whose sales are limited to beer alone, and where the boozers of the unit congregate nightly to drink and yarn. In old time the wet canteen used to be a fruitful source of crime--as crime goes in the Army--and general trouble, but moderation is the rule of to-day, and excessive drinking is rare in comparison with the ways of twenty years or so ago. The wet canteen of to-day is a cheerful place where men get their pints and sit over them, forming “schools,” as the various groups of chums are called, and drinking not so much as they talk, for they seek company rather than alcohol.

For the teetotallers of each unit, the society known as the Royal Army Temperance Association has established a “room” in practically every unit of the service; at a cost of fourpence a month a man is given the freedom of this room, and at the same time invited to sign the pledge, which he generally does. In any case, if an A.T.A. man is caught drinking to excess, he forfeits his membership of the Association and the right to use its room. In the room itself a bar is set up at which all kinds of temperance drinks are sold, together with buns and light eatables. In the Army, a man refraining from the use of intoxicants is said to be “on the tack,” and is known as a “tack-wallah.” Members of the R.A.T.A. are designated “wad-wallahs,” or “bun-scramblers,” by the frequenters of the canteen, who are known as “canteen-wallahs.” The word “wallah” is a Hindustani one which has passed into currency in the Army, its original meaning being the follower of any branch of trade or employment. In the same way, numbers of Hindustani terms are in general use; “roti” is almost invariably used in place of “bread,” “char” for “tea,” and “pani” for “water,” all being correct Hindustani equivalents. “Kampti,” meaning small, and “bus,” equivalent to “enough” or “stop,” come from the same language, while “scoff” in place of “eat” is derived from South Africa, where it is common currency even among civilian white folks.

Married “on the strength” in the Army carries with it a number of advantages for the married man. It is a little galling, in the first place, to have to satisfy one’s commanding officer as to the respectability of the intended wife before marriage, but it is not so many years ago that there was good reason for this. Once married, the soldier is granted free quarters for himself and wife, and the wife is allowed fuel and light up to a certain amount, together with rations, and an additional allowance is made in the event of children being born. Curiously enough, however, the size of the quarters allotted to the married men and their families is not determined by the number of children in the family, but by the rank of the married man; not many private soldiers venture to marry, for their rate of pay is so low as to make the experiment an extremely risky one, although the wife of the soldier gets--if she wishes it--a certain amount of the single men’s washing to do, by way of supplementing her husband’s pay.

Married “off the strength”--that is, without the permission of the officer commanding the unit--is doubly risky, for the wife of the man who marries thus gets no official recognition; her husband has to occupy a place in the barrack-room, for no separate quarters can be allotted to him; he has at the same time to find lodgings somewhere among the civilian inhabitants of the station for his wife--and children, if there are any--and, if he is a good character, he may be granted a sleeping-out pass, which confers on him the privilege of sleeping out of barracks--and this is a privilege that he must beg, not a right that he can claim. As the married establishment of a regiment or battalion is necessarily small, men frequently get married “off the strength,” though how they manage to exist and at the same time provide for their wives on military pay is a mystery. The most common explanation is that the wife, whatever work she has been engaged in before her marriage, continues it after; the hardest part of the business is that neither wife nor husband, in these circumstances, can count on the possession of a home as those married “on the strength” understand it.

The private soldier married “on the strength” usually has entered on his second period of service--that is, he has finished the twelve years for which he first contracted to serve, and has re-enlisted to complete twenty-one years with a view to a pension. Generally he manages to get a staff job of some sort, from employment on the regimental police to barrack sweeper, or anything else that will get him out of attending early morning parades as a rule--though all staff men have to attend early parades when the orders of the day say “strong as possible.” The rule in most units is that the staff jobs are distributed among the older soldiers, for these are supposed, and with justice, to be better able to dispense with perpetual training than the younger men. As a rule, the appointment of any young soldier to a staff appointment--except such posts as that of orderly-room clerk, for which special aptitude counts before length of service--is the cause of considerable bitterness among the older soldiers who are still at duty, and is usually attributed to rank favouritism, whether it is due to that or no.

In cavalry regiments especially, the ordinary duty-men look for amusement when the staff men are “dug out” to undergo the ordinary routine of duty, either by way of annual training or on the occasion of a “strong as possible” parade. The duty-man has his horse every day, and horse and man get to know each other, but the staff-man, attending stables only on the occasion of his being warned to attend a duty parade, has as a rule to take any horse that is “going spare,” as they call it, and usually the horse that nobody else has taken up for riding is not a pleasant beast. And the staff-man may be a bit rusty as regards drill and riding, so that the two things combined produce the effect of involuntary dismounting in the field or at riding school occasionally--or, as the soldier would say, “dismounting by order from hind-quarters.” Taken on the whole, the staff-man’s day at duty is not a pleasant one, while, if he ventures to complain to his comrades or grumble in any way, he gets more ridicule than sympathy. Usually the duty-man affects to consider the staff-man an encumbrance, and in the cavalry even signallers, during the time that they are excused riding and attending stables, are told that it is “easy enough to wag a little bit of stick about--why don’t you come down to stables and do a bit?” The reply generally makes up in forcibility for a deficiency in elegance, for the trooper is capable of maintaining his reputation as regards the use of language--of sorts.

A form of staff employment which calls for a particular class of man is the post of officer’s servant; it amounts to the regular work of a valet for “first servant,” and that of a groom for “second servant,” and is not always an enviable post, especially if the officer in question is short-tempered or “bad to get on with.” Officers’ servants occupy quarters away from the duty-men, and in the vicinity of the officers’ mess in the case of single officers; married officers’ servants are provided with quarters in their masters’ houses. In addition to the officers’ servants, there is in each unit a regular staff of mess waiters both for officers’ and sergeants’ messes, while all non-commissioned officers from the rank of sergeant upward are permitted to employ a “bâtman” from among the men serving under them. The sergeant’s bâtman, though, is not excused from duty as is the officer’s servant, but has to get through all his own work, and then clean the sergeant’s equipment, keep his bunk in order, groom his horse, and clean his saddle (in cavalry and artillery units), as well as attend all parades from which the sergeant has no power to excuse him. Every staff job carries with it a certain amount of extra-duty pay, and this, in addition to the fact of being excused from at least some of the ordinary parades of the duty soldier, causes a post on the staff to be sought after by most men. There are some, though, who prefer to be at ordinary duty, and the man who is going in for promotion usually avoids staff employ, for the two do not go together.

Among non-commissioned officers as well as among the rank and file there is a certain amount of staff employment, but it is a smaller amount, and a good deal of it is unenviable business. The post of provost-sergeant, for instance, although it carries extra-duty pay, is naturally not a popular business, for having control of the regimental police and being responsible for the punishments of delinquents on defaulters’ drill and punishment fatigues does not tend to increase the popularity of a non-commissioned officer. The business of postman in a regiment is usually entrusted to a corporal; as a rule, the oldest corporal is chosen to fill this berth, and one just concluding his term of military service is practically certain to get it as soon as it falls vacant. But staff jobs for non-coms. are far fewer, relatively, than for the rank and file, and, outside the artificers’ shops, the regimental orderly room and quartermaster’s store, practically every non-com. is at duty.