ar. The same thing was observed in
the Canadian Corps, General Currie, the corps commander, having been
an estate agent, and many of his high officers having had no military
training of any scientific importance before they handled their own men
in France and Flanders.

XXI

As there are exceptions to every rule, so harsh criticism must be
modified in favor of the generalship and organization of the Second
Army-of rare efficiency under the restrictions and authority of the
General Staff. I often used to wonder what qualities belonged to Sir
Herbert Plumer, the army commander. In appearance he was almost
a caricature of an old-time British general, with his ruddy,
pippin-cheeked face, with white hair, and a fierce little white
mustache, and blue, watery eyes, and a little pot-belly and short
legs. He puffed and panted when he walked, and after two minutes in his
company Cyril Maude would have played him to perfection. The staff-work
of his army was as good in detail as any machinery of war may be, and
the tactical direction of the Second Army battles was not slipshod nor
haphazard, as so many others, but prepared with minute attention to
detail and after thoughtful planning of the general scheme. The battle
of Wytschaete and Messines was a model in organization and method, and
worked in its frightful destructiveness like the clockwork of a death
machine. Even the battles of Flanders in the autumn of '17, ghastly as
they were in the losses of our men in the state of the ground through
which they had to fight, and in futile results, were well organized by
the Second Army headquarters, compared with the abominable mismanagement
of other troops, the contrast being visible to every battalion officer
and even to the private soldier. How much share of this was due to Sir
Herbert Plumer it is impossible for me to tell, though it is fair to
give him credit for soundness of judgment in general ideas and in the
choice of men.

He had for his chief of staff Sir John Harington, and beyond all doubt
this general was the organizing brain of to Second Army, though with
punctilious chivalry he gave, always, the credit of all his work to
the army commander. A thin, nervous, highly strung man, with extreme
simplicity of manner and clarity of intelligence, he impressed me as a
brain of the highest temper and quality in staff-work. His memory for
detail was like a card-index system, yet his mind was not clogged with
detail, but s