Such are the landscapes and method of modern war. It is more difficult
in its nature from war as it was waged in the nineteenth century than
that was from the nature of the phalanx or the legion. The nucleus
fact--when I talked to General Joffre he was very insistent upon
this point--is still as ever the ordinary fighting man, but all the
accessories and conditions of his personal encounter with the fighting
man of the other side have been revolutionised in a quarter of a
century. The fighting together in a close disciplined order, shoulder
to shoulder, which has held good for thousands of years as the best and
most successful fighting, has been destroyed; the idea of _breaking_
infantry formation as the chief offensive operation has disappeared, the
cavalry charge and the cavalry pursuit are as obsolete as the cross-bow.
The modern fighting man is as individualised as a half back or a centre
forward in a football team. Personal fighting has become "scrapping"
again, an individual adventure with knife, club, bomb, revolver or
bayonet. In this war we are working out things instead of thinking them
out, and these enormous changes are still but imperfectly apprehended.
The trained and specialised military man probably apprehends them as
feebly as anyone.

This is a thing that I want to state as emphatically as possible. It is
the pith of the lesson I have learnt at the front. The whole method of
war has been so altered in the past five and twenty years as to make
it a new and different process altogether. Much the larger part of this
alteration has only become effective in the last two years. Everyone is
a beginner at this new game; everyone is experimenting and learning.

The idea has been put admirably by _Punch._ That excellent picture
of the old-fashioned sergeant who complains to his officer of the new
recruit; "'E's all right in the trenches, Sir; 'e's all right at a