So that little British Expeditionary Force, in ratio of number one to twenty or thirty of the French army, crossed the Channel to help save Belgium.  Gallantry it had worthy of the brightest chapter in the immortal history of its regiments from Quebec to Kandahar, from Agincourt, Blenheim and Waterloo to South Africa, Guards and Hussars, Highlanders and Lowlanders, kilts and breeks, Connaught Rangers and Royal Fusiliers, Duke of Wellington’s and Prince of Wales’ Own, come again to Flanders.  The best blood of England was leading Tommy Atkins.  Whatever British aristocracy is or is not, it never forgets its duty to the England of its fathers.  It is never ingrate to its fortune.  The time had come to go out and die for England, if need be, and these officers went as their ancestors had gone before them, as they would go to lectures at Oxford, to the cricket field and the polo field, in outward phlegm, but with a mighty passion in their hearts.

The Germans affected to despise this little army.  It had not been trained in the mass tactics which hurl columns of flesh forward to gain tactical points that have been mauled by artillery fire.  You do not use mass tactics against Boers, nor against Afridis, nor Filipinos.  It is difficult to combine the two kinds of efficiency.  Those who were on the march to the relief of the Peking Legations recall how the Germans were as ill at ease in that kind of work as the Americans and British were at home.  It made us misjudge the Germans and the Germans misjudge us when they thought of us as trying to make war on the continent of Europe.  A small, mobile, regular army, formed to go overseas and march long distances, was to fight in a war where millions were engaged and a day’s march would cover an immense stretch of territory in international calculations of gain and loss.

For its own purposes, the British Expeditionary Force was well-nigh a perfect instrument.  As quantity of ammunition was an important factor in transport in the kind of campaign which it was prepared for, its guns were the most accurate on a given point and its system of fire adapted to that end; but the French system of fire, with plentiful ammunition from near bases over fine roads, was better adapted for a continental campaign.  To the last button that little army was prepared.  Man for man and regiment for regiment, I should say it was the best force that ever fired a shot in Europe; this without regard to national character.  As England must make every regular soldier count, and as she depended upon the efficiency of the few rather than on numbers, she had trained her men in musketry.  No continental army could afford to allow its soldiers to expend the amount of ammunition on the target range that the British had expended.  Only by practice can you learn how to shoot.  This gives the soldier confidence.  He stays in his trench and keeps on shooting because he knows that he can hit those advancing figures and that this is his best protection.  The more I learn, the more I am convinced that the Germans ought to have got the British Expeditionary Force; and the Germans were very surprised that they did not get it.  With their surprise developed a respect for British arms, reported by all visitors to Germany.