Not Books That Count.

These are the opinions of the practical men upon the field of battle.  Surely a poor result from the 200 volumes a year and all the weighty labors of the General Staff!  “Artillery nearly as good as our own, rifle fire beneath contempt.”  That is the verdict.  How will the well-taught parade schritt avail them when it comes to a stricken field?

But let it not seem as if this were meant for disparagement.  We should be sinking to the Kaiser’s level if we answer his “contemptible little army” by pretending that his own troops are anything but a very formidable and big army.  They are formidable in numbers, formidable, too, in their patriotic devotion, in their native courage, and in the possession of such material, such great cannon, aircraft, machine guns, and armored cars as none of the Allies can match.  They have every advantage which a nation would be expected to have when it has known that war was a certainty, while others have only treated it as a possibility.  There is a minuteness and earnestness of preparation which are only possible for an assured event.  But the fact remains, and it will only be brought out more clearly by the Emperor’s unchivalrous phrase, that in every arm the British have already shown themselves to be the better troops.  Had he the Froissart spirit within him he would rather have said:  “You have today a task which is worthy of you.  You are faced by an army which has a high repute and a great history.  There is real glory to be won today.”  Had he said this then, win or lose, he would not have needed to be ashamed of his own words—­the words of ungenerous spirit.

It is a very strange thing how German critics have taken for granted that the British Army had deteriorated, while the opinion of all those who were in close touch with it was that it was never so good.  Even some of the French experts made the same mistake, and Gen. Bonnat counseled his countrymen not to rely upon it, since “it would take refuge amid its islands at the first reverse.”  One would think that the cause which makes for its predominance were obvious.  Apart from any question of national spirit there is the all-important fact that the men are there of their own free will, an advantage which I trust that we shall never be compelled to surrender.  Again, the men are of longer service in every arm, and they have far more opportunities of actual fighting than come to any other force.  Finally they are divided into regiments with centuries of military glories streaming from their banners, which carry on a mighty tradition.  The very words the Guards, the Rifles, the Connaught Rangers, the Buffs, the Scots Greys, the Gordons, sound like bugle calls.  How could an army be anything but dangerous which had such units in its line of battle?”

History Repeating Itself.