quadrapiper said:
Could that be in part due to a system that may have forced the dunces into independent action much earlier in their careers, encouraging a filtering of those unsuited for command somewhere around Captain-Maj or Lt-LCdr, and polishing the command skills of the good ones at an earlier stage?
That's certainly possible. I'm
guessing that was the Royal Navy's idea back in the age of sail. That service
appears to have valued and rewarded independence of thought and action ~ within the limits imposed by some pretty general orders ~ and punished caution (consider the unfortunate Admiral Byng after the Battle of Minorca) and according to some historians (see e.g. Nicholas Rodger's
The Command of the Ocean : a Naval History of Britain, Volume 2, 1649-1815 (2004)) it (Byng's execution) was responsible, in some large measure, for the very real aggressiveness of Royal Navy captains and admirals.
Perhaps, in the same era, colonial service ~ which also frequently put an officer far, far away from political control ~ exercised the same function for the British Army.
As far as I can tell the
idea of a clear chain of command, with small
ish, quite low ranking staffs was common in the East India Company's army in the 18th century as well as in the British Army proper. Of course,
real staffs didn't appear until after there Napoleonic wars and British staff work was not famous for its quality in either Crimea or South Africa. It appears, to me, to have improved somewhat in 1914-18 ~ see, especially, the excellent (largely British) staff of 1st Canadian Corps who under LGen (later FM) Byng planned and executed,
inter alia, Vimy Ridge and which included e.g. then LCol (also latter FM) Alan Brooke. Staff work seems to have gotten a lot better in 1939-45 and after, based, largely, I assume on lessons learned in 1914-18 and in subsequent colonial skirmishes. In any event, by the time I saw it, I concluded, based on observation of several armies, that British and Canadian Army tactical staffs (brigade through corps) were smaller in number, lower in rank and markedly better in doing what staffs need to do (supporting their commander in the functions of command, by
controlling and looking after details, and helping subordinate commanders to execute their tasks, by
managing resources, including time).
One marked difference between British and Canadian staffs, on one hand, and American, French and German staffs, on there other, was that relatively few officers in the British/Canadian system were
tied to their commanders, while one often saw commandeers
and several principle staff officers move from one command to the other in the latter cases. That's a bad practice because it encourages "yes men" and deprives an incoming commander of some needed
institutional knowledge.