y I can pay high tribute to some of our staff--officers at
divisional, corps, and army headquarters, because of their industry,
efficiency, and devotion to duty. And during the progress of battle I
have seen them, hundreds of times, working desperately for long hours
without much rest or sleep, so that the fighting-men should get their
food and munitions, so that the artillery should support their actions,
and the troops in reserve move up to their relief at the proper time and
place.

Owing largely to new army brains the administrative side of our war
became efficient in its method and organization, and the armies were
worked like clockwork machines. The transport was good beyond all words
of praise, and there was one thing which seldom failed to reach poor
old Tommy Atkins, unless he was cut off by shell-fire, and that was his
food. The motor-supply columns and ammunition-dumps were organized to
the last item. Our map department was magnificent, and the admiration
of the French. Our Intelligence branch became valuable (apart from a
frequent insanity of optimism) and was sometimes uncanny in the accuracy
of its information about the enemy's disposition and plans. So that the
Staff was not altogether hopeless in its effect, as the young battalion
officers, with sharp tongues and a sense of injustice in their hearts,
made out, with pardonable blasphemy, in their dugouts.

Nevertheless the system was bad and British generalship made many
mistakes, some of them, no doubt, unavoidable, because it is human to
err, and some of them due to sheer, simple, impregnable stupidity.

In the early days the outstanding fault of our generals was their desire
to gain ground which was utterly worthless when gained. They organized
small attacks against strong positions, dreadfully costly to take,
and after the desperate valor of men had seized a few yards of mangled
earth, found that they had made another small salient, jutting out from
their front in a V-shaped wedge, so that it was a death-trap for the men
who had to hold it. This was done again and again, and I remember one
distinguished officer saying, with bitter irony, remembering how many of
his men had died, "Our generals must have their little V's at any price,
to justify themselves at G. H. Q."

In the battles of the Somme they attacked isolated objectives on
narrow fronts, so that the enemy swept our men with fire by artillery
concentrated from all points, instead of having