The sceptre of the sea lords

Who can forget Alec Guinness as Colonel John Nicholson in The Bridge on the River Kwai, going around with a twisted twig in his hand as if it were a cane of command? We see him swinging it with a swagger, using it as a pointer, holding it in his right hand and tapping its other end on his open left palm with a "well, gent'men!"

That was the thespian at his best. That jungle stick turned into a baton of authority in his hand, rendering an officer-like dignity to the miserable character that he was playing-a tortured but proud British colonel in a Japanese PoW camp. I believe, and I know many in the armed forces would agree, that Nicholson and his fellow-Pows wouldn't have got that bridge completed but for that twisted twig that he carried as an officer's cane.

That's what a stick, a cane, or a baton, does to an officer. As old drill sergeants in the military academy are said to have told young cadets who were being primed to receive their commission, "the cane in your hand is not for knocking off flowers on the walkways, nor for poking at comely maidens; it is to be carried in your hand so that you bear yourselves like gentlemen."