e oddest outcome of the
tremendous _de-militarisation_ of war that has been going on. In France
it is probably not so marked because of the greater flexibility and
adaptability of the French culture.

All military people--people, that is, professionally and primarily
military--are inclined to be conservative. For thousands of years the
military tradition has been a tradition of discipline. The conception of
the common soldier has been a mechanically obedient, almost dehumanised
man, of the of officer a highly trained autocrat. In two years all this
has been absolutely reversed. Individual quality, inventive organisation
and industrialism will win this war. And no class is so innocent of
these things as the military caste. Long accustomed as they are to the
importance of moral effect they put a brave face upon the business;
they save their faces astonishingly, but they are no longer guiding and
directing this war, they are being pushed from behind by forces they
never foresaw and cannot control. The aeroplanes and great guns have
bolted with them, the tanks begotten of naval and civilian wits, shove
them to victory in spite of themselves.

Wherever I went behind the British lines the officers were going about
in spurs. These spurs at last got on my nerves. They became symbolical.
They became as grave an insult to the tragedy of the war as if they were
false noses. The British officers go for long automobile rides in spurs.
They walk about the trenches in spurs. Occasionally I would see a horse;
I do not wish to be unfair in this matter, there were riding horses
sometimes within two or three miles of the ultimate front, but they were
rarely used.

I do not say that the horse is entirely obsolescent in this war. In
was nothing is obsolete. In the trenches men fight with sticks. In the
Pasubio battle the other day one of the Alpini silenced a machine gun
by throwing stones. In the West African campaign we have employed troops
armed with bows and arrows, and they have done very valuable work. But
these are exceptional cases. The military use of the horse henceforth
will be such an exceptional case. It is ridiculous for these spurs still
to clink about the modern battlefield. What the gross cost of the spurs
and horses and trappings of the British army amount to, and how many men
are grooming and tending horses who might just as well be ploughing
and milking at home, I cannot guess; it must be a total so enormous as
seriou