scrap; but 'e won't never make a soldier," is the quintessence of
everything I am saying here. And were there not the very gravest doubts
about General Smuts in British military circles because he had "had no
military training"? A Canadian expressed the new view very neatly on
being asked, in consequence of a deficient salute, whether he wanted to
be a soldier, by saying, "Not I! I want to be a fighter!"

The professional officer of the old dispensation was a man specialised
in relation to one of the established "arms." He was an infantryman, a
cavalryman, a gunner or an engineer. It will be interesting to trace the
changes that have happened to all these arms.

Before this war began speculative writers had argued that infantry drill
in close formation had now no fighting value whatever, that it was no
doubt extremely necessary for the handling, packing, forwarding and
distribution of men, but that the ideal infantry fighter was now a
highly individualised and self-reliant man put into a pit with a machine
gun, and supported by a string of other men bringing him up supplies and
ready to assist him in any forward rush that might be necessary.

The opening phases of the war seemed to contradict this. It did not
at first suit the German game to fight on this most modern theory,
and isolated individual action is uncongenial to the ordinary German
temperament and opposed to the organised social tendencies of German
life. To this day the Germans attack only in close order; they are
unable to produce a real modern infantry for aggressive purposes, and it
is a matter of astonishment to military minds on the English side that
our hastily trained new armies should turn out to be just as good at
the new fighting as the most "seasoned troops." But there is no reason
whatever why they should not be. "Leading," in the sense of going