Brains Utilized

The incredible stupidity and conservatism of Great Britain's Imperial General Staff very nearly lost World War II before it ever began. So says Captain B. H. Liddell Hart, military theorist whose misinterpreted belief in the virtue of defensive fighting has put him under a cloud, but whose military dope is still among the best in Britain. Last week a new Liddell Hart book*; reached the U. S., and one of its chapters, called "Wasted Brains," exposes that stupidity in all its lurid details.

After the first World War, says Liddell Hart, the best younger brains of the Army saw that machines would dominate future wars. But tenaciously conservative elder officers held to antique ways of foot and horse. In 1934 Chief of Imperial General Staff General Sir Archibald Montgomery-Massingberd declared: "It is certain that if we do not go slowly with mechanization we shall land ourselves in difficulties."

So men who knew horseflesh were put in charge of tanks, and all the brilliant experimenters with mechanization were put out of the way--one was retired, another sent to command a second-class district in India, where there were no mechanized troops, another given an anti-aircraft division.

By 1937, it was obvious that tank production was far behind necessities--and the Army looked around for a new Master General of Ordnance. "An obvious choice," says Liddell Hart, was Giffard Le Quesne Martel. This brilliant young man helped develop tanks in 1916. In November of that year he wrote a paper suggesting an entire Army of fighting vehicles. Later, he built the first one-man tank in his own garage. Known by his staff as Q, by his friends as "Slosher," he was, as all insiders knew, the man to produce tanks. But Martel was only a colonel, and when he was made a major general he was given charge not of tanks but of Territorials (militia).

Liddell Hart ends "Wasted Brains" with this terse thought: "It is not too late." Last week--very late, but perhaps not too late--the War Office announced the creation of a new post: Commander of the Royal Armored Corps. Named to fill it was Major General Giffard Le Quesne Martel.

*DYNAMIC DEFENCE--Faber & Faber (London)--25. 6d.

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