five! Lie down, all! Steady! Front rank kneel!" and so forth, he
becomes unhappy, and grows acutely miserable when he hears a
comrade turn over with the rattle of fire-irons falling into the
fender, and the grunt of a pole-axed ox. If he can be moved about
a little and allowed to watch the effect of his own fire on the
enemy he feels merrier, and may be then worked up to the blind
passion of fighting, which is, contrary to general belief,
controlled by a chilly Devil and shakes men like ague. If he is
not moved about, and begins to feel cold at the pit of the
stomach, and in that crisis is badly mauled and hears orders that
were never given, he will break, and he will break badly, and of
all things under the light of the Sun there is nothing more
terrible than a broken British regiment. When the worst comes to
the worst and the panic is really epidemic, the men must be e'en
let go, and the Company Commanders had better escape to the enemy
and stay there for safety's sake. If they can be made to come
again they are not pleasant men to meet; because they will not
break twice.

About thirty years from this date, when we have succeeded in half-
educating everything that wears trousers, our Army will be a
beautifully unreliable machine. It will know too much and it will
do too little. Later still, when all men are at the mental level
of the officer of to-day, it will sweep the earth. Speaking
roughly, you must employ either blackguards or gentlemen, or, best
of all, blackguards commanded by gentlemen, to do butcher's work
with efficiency and despatch. The ideal soldier should, of course,
think for himself - the "Pocket-book" says so. Unfortunately, to
attain this virtue, he has to pass through the phase of thinking
of himself, and that is misdirected genius. A blackguard may be