For whatever reason, armies at peace need bands. It is perhaps not coincidental that the only country which has been at war throughout its existence, Israel, doesn't seem to need army bands, dress uniforms or military ceremony.
Everywhere else, armies have bands - even armies in conditions of permanent near-hostility, such as those of India and Pakistan, follow shared traditions of military music. Those traditions have tended to converge around common conventions of pipe music from Scotland and Ireland and the tunes of Sousa and Strauss, while drawing on countries' own indigenous traditions. The universality of army bands, the commonality of tradition and form, suggests that armies have as much need of them as they have of drill, commissariats, uniforms and rank.
Horse Show
So why is the Army musical arm being so reduced that this week it was no longer capable of fielding two full bands as it has always done, at probably its largest annual occasion, the Dublin Horse Show? This might seem trivial; but since Army officers don't regard the matter as trivial, and since morale among Army musicians has been badly hit by the failure to recruit - there is a waiting list of 60 applicants for Army bands, even though they are under-strength - it is a matter of some importance.
For the bands are a symbol; and the crisis in Army music was very evident to observers at Messen last November when the bands of the Army and the Royal Irish Regiment gathered to commemorate the Irish dead of the war that began at midnight 85 years ago last Wednesday. For some of us who have taken an interest in these matters, it was a day of enormous pride that finally Irish soldiers of the two traditions could come together and honour the memory and the sacrifice of an earlier generation of soldiers.
But the pride was mixed. Most of us from the Republic were less than heartened at the comparison between the two sets of bands.
Some of the Army's bandsmen were overweight; some were far too old; their general bearing was unsoldierly. The uniform of the brass section looked as if it had been bought from a Welsh colliery band in 1946. Raincoats. Flat caps. Baggy trousers. In short, beside the sprightly bandsmen of the Royal Irish, with their splendid uniforms, the Army band looked very second-rate (apart from the kilted pipers who looked and sounded marvellous).
This is the sort of remark which will not go down well in any quarter: treasonable, Britloving, anti-national, unpatriotic, Army-bashing. Call it what you want. Nobody could look on the demeanour and the uniform of the Army band at Messen and say that they were truly representative of the Army and the Irish soldier at their best. The reverse was the case. The Army, and the soldiers of this Republic, were and are done a grave disservice by under-strength bands which are not properly uniformed or drilled and whose members are quite unfit for any service in the field.
Visible face
The bands are in many ways the most visible face of the Army. It is the basis upon which, rightly or wrongly, we are likely to judge it. Most Irish people feel a very proper pride in the Army; and most soldiers feel a very proper pride in the Army in which they have the honour to serve. Moreover, I know from experience of writing on this subject that few soldiers welcome criticism of any kind from outside: their instinct is the normal military one of defending their own, rather than wondering whether or not the criticisms are valid.
The bands are probably symptomatic of what has been happening to the Army overall. Officers do not seem to know what purpose it has, beyond an almost indefinite mandate in the Lebanon, where its service has been quite superlative. But we did not raise and train an Army for service in a single foreign field: that much we know.
So what do we want an Army for? Has our political establishment the will to dress and train and equip our Army so that it can perform clearly defined and self-contained military functions in the field, as, for example, the Danish army can?
The answer is, really, no. If we had not the Lebanon and the Border, what would the Army have done in the past 20 years? Would it by now resemble its bands: overweight, elderly and unmartial? Sheltered by NATO, and more particularly by the US, militarily we have for decades taken the cheap option, and the Army bands are the most visible expression of this parsimony.
Cavalry arm
A willingness to raise and equip an army is the mark of sovereignty, and most sovereign states call upon their armies to perform ceremonial duties. Perplexingly, we do not: yet would it be so preposterous in this country of the horse for the Army Equestrian School to have a cavalry arm for State occasions? Would it be so preposterous in this country with so many stirring martial airs for our Army bands to be smart, young and well-uniformed? And most of all, would it be so preposterous in this country with great soldiering traditions for our Army to be properly equipped with modern troop-carrying helicopters, armour and missiles?
We do not take the Army seriously enough; and the bands are merely the symptom.