ction that 'this has
been the ruin of nations from time immemorial.'

Independently of the evidence of history already adduced, it
would be reasonable to conclude that the tendency is strengthened
and made more menacing when the service in which it prevails
becomes more highly specialised. If custom and regulation leave
little freedom of action to the individual members of an armed
force, the difficulty--sure to be experienced by them--of shaking
themselves clear of their fetters when the need for doing so arises
is increased. To realise--when peace is broken--the practical
conditions of war demands an effort of which the unfettered
intelligence alone seems capable. The great majority of successful
leaders in war on both elements have not been considerably, or
at all, superior in intellectual acuteness to numbers of their
fellows; but they have had strength of character, and their minds
were not squeezed in a mould into a commonplace and uniform pattern.

The 'canker of a long peace,' during recent years at any rate,
is not manifested in disuse of arms, but in mistaken methods.
For a quarter of a century the civilised world has tended more
and more to become a drill-ground, but the spirit dominating
it has been that of the pedant. There has been more exercise
and less reality. The training, especially of officers, becomes
increasingly scholastic. This, and the deterioration consequent
on it, are not merely modern phenomena. They appear in all ages.
'The Sword of the Saracens,' says Gibbon, 'became less formidable
when their youth was drawn from the camp to the college.' The
essence of pedantry is want of originality. It is nourished on
imitation. For the pedant to imitate is enough of itself; to
him the suitability of the model is immaterial. Thus military
bodies have been ruined by mimicry of foreign arrangements quite
inapplicable to the conditions of the mimics' country. More than
twenty years ago Sir Henry Maine, speaking of the war of American
Independence, said, 'Next to their stubborn valour, the chief
secret of the colonists' success was the incapacity of the English
generals, trained in the stiff Prussian system soon to perish
at Jena, to adapt themselves to new conditions of warfare.' He
pointed out that the effect of this uncritical imitation of what
was foreign was again experienced by men 'full of admiration
of a newer German system.' We may not be able to explain what
it is, but, all the same, there do