the other. If the beaten side had been elaborately organised and
carefully trained, there must have been something bad in its
organisation or its methods.

Now this 'something bad,' this defect--wherever it has disclosed
itself--has been enough to neutralise the most splendid courage
and the most unselfish devotion. It has been seen that armies
and navies the valour of which has never been questioned have
been defeated by antagonists sometimes as highly organised as
they were, and sometimes much less so. This ought to put us on
the track of the cause which has produced an effect so little
anticipated. A 'regular' permanently embodied or maintained service
of fighting men is always likely to develop a spirit of intense
professional self-satisfaction. The more highly organised it is,
and the more sharply its official frontiers are defined, the
more intense is this spirit likely to become. A 'close' service of
the kind grows restive at outside criticism, and yields more and
more to the conviction that no advance in efficiency is possible
unless it be the result of suggestions emanating from its own
ranks. Its view of things becomes narrower and narrower, whereas
efficiency in war demands the very widest view. Ignorant critics
call the spirit thus engendered 'professional conservatism'; the
fact being that change is not objected to--is even welcomed,
however frequent it may be, provided only that it is suggested
from inside. An immediate result is 'unreality and formalism of
peace training'--to quote a recent thoughtful military critic.

As the formalism becomes more pronounced, so the unreality increases.
The proposer or introducer of a system of organisation of training
or of exercises is often, perhaps usually, capable of distinguishing