e man who has learned to fight for his own hand. The
British have had the teachings of two recent campaigns fought with
modern weapons--that of the Tirah and of South Africa. Now that the
reserves have joined the colors there are few regiments which have not a
fair sprinkling of veterans from these wars in their ranks. The Pathan
and the Boer have been their instructors in something more practical
than those imperial grand manoeuvres where the all-highest played with
his puppets in such a fashion that one of his Generals remarked that the
chief practical difficulty of a campaign so conducted would be the
disposal of the dead.

Boers and Pathans have been hard masters and have given many a slap to
their admiring pupils, but the lesson has been learned. It was not show
troops, General, who, with two corps, held five of your best day after
day from Mons to Compiegne. It is no reproach to your valor, but you
were up against men who were equally brave and knew a great deal more of
the game. This must begin to break upon you, and will surely grow
clearer as the days go by. We shall often in the future take the knock
as well as give it, but you will not say that we are a slow army if you
live to chronicle this war, nor will your imperial master be proud of
the adjective which he has demeaned himself in using before his troops
had learned their lesson.

*The South African Lesson.*

The fact is that the German Army, with all its great traditions, has
been petrifying for many years back. They never learned the lesson of
South Africa. It was not for want of having it expounded to them, for
their military attache--"'im with the spatchcock on 'is 'elmet,'" as I
heard him described by a British orderly--missed nothing of what
occurred, as is evident from their official history of the war. And yet
they missed it, and with all those ideas of individual efficiency and
elastic independent formation which are the essence of modern
soldiering. Their own more liberal thinkers were aware of it. Here are
the words which were put into the mouth of Guentz, the representative of
the younger school, in Beverlein's famous novel:

"The organization of the German Army rested upon foundations which had
been laid a hundred years ago. Since the great war they had never
seriously been put to the proof, and during the last three decades they
had only been altered in the most trifling details. In three long
decades! And in one of those decades the w