at Kernstown.  Out of 4000 British soldiers there fell in an hour over 1200, and of 9000 French more than 2000 were killed or wounded; and yet, although the victors were twenty-four hours under arms without food, the issue was never doubtful.) The truth would seem to be that the Valley soldiers were not yet blooded.  In peace the individual is everything; material prosperity, self-indulgence, and the preservation of existence are the general aim.  In war the individual is nothing, and men learn the lesson of self-sacrifice.  But it is only gradually, however high the enthusiasm which inspires the troops, that the ideas of peace become effaced, and they must be seasoned soldiers who will endure, without flinching, the losses of Waterloo or Gettysburg.  Discipline, which means the effacement of the individual, does more than break the soldier to unhesitating obedience; it trains him to die for duty’s sake, and even the Stonewall Brigade, in the spring of 1862, was not yet thoroughly disciplined.  “The lack of competent and energetic officers,” writes Jackson’s chief of the staff, “was at this time the bane of the service.  In many there was neither an intelligent comprehension of their duties nor zeal in their performance.  Appointed by the votes of their neighbours and friends, they would neither exercise that rigidity in governing, nor that detailed care in providing for the wants of their men, which are necessary to keep soldiers efficient.  The duties of the drill and the sentry-post were often negligently performed; and the most profuse waste of ammunition and other military stores was permitted.  It was seldom that these officers were guilty of cowardice upon the field of battle, but they were often in the wrong place, fighting as common soldiers when they should have been directing others.  Above all was their inefficiency marked in their inability to keep their men in the ranks.  Absenteeism grew under them to a monstrous evil, and every poltroon and laggard found a way of escape.  Hence the frequent phenomenon that regiments, which on the books of the commissary appeared as consumers of 500 or 1000 rations, were reported as carrying into action 250 or 300 bayonets."* (* Dabney volume 2 pages 18 and 19.) It is unlikely that this picture is over-coloured, and it is certainly no reproach to the Virginia soldiers that their discipline was indifferent.  There had not yet been time to transform a multitude of raw recruits into the semblance of a regular army.  Competent instructors and trained leaders were few in the extreme, and the work had to be left in inexperienced hands.  One Stonewall Jackson was insufficient to leaven a division of 5000 men.