(_In favour of national work for everyone_).
"AND WHY SHOULDN'T PEOPLE BE DOING TO-DAY WHAT THEY NEVER DREAMED OF DOING
BEFORE THE WAR?"

_New Assistant_ (_his first operation_). "EXACTLY, SIR. ALL THE SAME, IF
ANYBODY HAD TOLD ME TWO DAYS AGO THAT I SHOULD NOW BE CUTTING THE HAIR OF A
COMPLETE STRANGER, I'D NEVER HAVE BELIEVED 'IM."]

WARS OF THE PAST.

(_As recorded in the Press of the period._)

VI.

_From "The Athens Advertiser and Piraeus Post_."

MACEDONIA'S ARMY.

THE FAMOUS PHALANX.

(_By our Military Expert_.)

The Macedonian Army has recently undergone an entire reconstruction at the
hands of KING PHILIP. It is now organised on a national and territorial
basis and is divided into infantry and cavalry. The cavalry predominates
and is therefore the stronger arm. The unit of cavalry is the squadron, of
infantry the battalion. (It is of the utmost interest to note that there
are two battalions in a regiment, each about fifteen hundred strong).

KING PHILIP, it will be remembered, received his military education in the
school of EPAMINONDAS, who, as is well known, revolutionised the Higher
Thought of every Higher Command by the discovery and application of a
single tactical fact--namely, that the chances of A being able to give B a
stronger push than B can give him are _in direct ratio to the numerical
superiority of A over B_. It follows, then, that, faced with a sufficient
superiority, B _must_ retire, and _the initiative then rests with the side
that possesses it_.

In pursuance of this tactical ideal EPAMINONDAS argued that the old method
of winning battles, which was that A should exercise superior force against
every point of B's line (or body), required that A should be bigger than B,
buskin for buskin and brisket for brisket. But since it is sufficient,
while "refusing" the rest of one's own body (or line), to bring an
overwhelming force to bear on the point of a person's jaw, in order to
discomfit him, so in a battle a numerically inferior A, by concentrating on
a vital point of numerically superior B, can gain a local numerical
superiority which will enable him to rout B utterly. (This is always
supposing that B is not doing the same thing himself on the other wing, in
which case each army would miss the other altogether--a condition of things
into which the military art does not care to follow them).

Hence the phalanx or "preponderating mass formation." The Macedonian
development of thi