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officers is still there and newcomers tend to be promoted on social grounds,
with, no doubt, an eye to political reliability. But all this will gradually
change if the war goes on. The need for able men will be too great, and
the difference between the middle class and the better paid working class
is now too small, for at any rate the lower ranks of the army to remain on
a class basis. The disasters now probably ahead of us may push the
process of democratisation forward, as the disaster in Flanders did a
year ago.
4.
We read your interesting article in a recent
Tribune
on the Home
Guards. Could you tell us something of the present status of the move–
ment? Is Wintring/w,m the moving force behind
it
still? Is it most a
middle-class or a working-class army? How democratic
is
it today?
The Home Guard is the most anti-Fascist body existing in England
at this moment, and at the same time is an astonishing phenomenon, a sort
of People's Army officered by Blimps. The rank and file are predomi–
nantly working-class, with a strong middle-class seasoning, but practically
all the commands are held by wealthy elderly men, a lot of whom are
utterly incompetent. The Home Guard is a part-time force, practically
unpaid, and at the beginning it was organised, I think consciously and
intentionally, in such a way that a working-class person would never have
enough spare time to hold any post above that of sergeant. Just recently
the higher positions have been stuffed with retired generals, admirals and
titled dugouts of all kinds. Principal age-groups of the rank and file are
between 35 and 50 or under 20. Officers from Company Commander
(captain) upwards are much older on average, sometimes as old as
seventy.
Given this set-up you can imagine the struggle that has gone on
between the blimpocracy, wanting a parade-ground army of pre-1914
type, and the rank and file wanting, though less articulately, a more
democratic type of force specialising in guerilla methods and weapons.
The controversy has never been overtly political but has turned upon
technical points of organisation, discipline and tactics, all of which, of
course, have political implications which are half-consciously grasped on
both sides. The War Office has been fairly open-minded and helpful, but
I think it is true to say that the higher ranks within the Home Guard have
fought steadily against a realistic view of war and that all experimenta·
tion and attempts at serious training have been due to proddings from
below. Wintringham and some of his associates are still at the Home
Guard training school (started unofficially by the weekly Picture Post and
afterwards taken over by the War Office), but the Wintringham ("People·•s
Army") school of thought has lost ground during the past six months.
It
or something like it will probably gain ground again during the coming
months, and Wintringham has had very great influence, as thousands of
men from all parts of the country have passed through his hands in three–
day training courses. Although the Home Guard is now more similar to
the regular army, or rather to the pre-war Territorials, than it was when
