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