art in organizing manoeuvres is to reproduce such conditions, for only in this way can the strain of the general situation and the collective mass of individual responsibility, such as exist in actual warfare, be distinctly brought home.  This is a most weighty consideration.  The superior officers must have clearly brought before their eyes the limits of the possible and the impossible in modern warfare, in order to be trained to deal with great situations.

The requirements which these reflections suggest are the restriction of small-scale manoeuvres in favour of the large and predominantly strategical manoeuvres, and next the abolition of some less important military exercises in order to apply the money thus saved in this direction.  We must subject all our resources to a single test—­that they conduce to the perfecting of a modern army.  We must subject all our resources to a single test—­that they conduce to the perfecting of a modern army.  If the military drill-grounds are suitably enlarged (a rather difficult but necessary process, since, in view of the range of the artillery and the mass tactics, they have generally become too small) a considerable part of the work which is done in the divisional manoeuvres could be carried out on them.  The money saved by this change could be devoted to the large army manoeuvres.  One thing is certain:  a great impulse must be given to the development of our manoeuvre system if it is to fulfil its purpose as formerly; in organization and execution these manoeuvres must be modern in the best sense of the word.

It seems, however, quite impossible to carry out this sort of training on so comprehensive a scale that it will by itself be sufficient to educate serviceable commanders for the great war.  The manoeuvres can only show their full value if the officers of every rank who take part in them have already had a competent training in theory.

To encourage this preliminary training of the superior officers is thus one of the most serious tasks of an efficient preparation for war.  These must not regard their duty as lying exclusively in the training of the troops, but must also be ever striving further to educate themselves and their subordinates for leadership in the great war.  Strategic war games on a large scale, which in the army corps can be conducted by the commanding Generals, and in the army-inspections by the Inspectors, seem to me to be the only means by which this end can be attained.  All superior officers must be criticized by the standard of their efficiency in superior commands.  The threads of all this training will meet in the hands of the Chief of the General Army Staff as the strategically responsible authority.

It seems undesirable in any case to leave it more or less to chance to decide whether those who hold high commands will be competent or not for their posts.  The circumstances that a man is an energetic commander of a division, or as General in command maintains discipline in his army corps, affords no conclusive proof that he is fitted to be the leader of an army.  Military history supplies many instances of this.