The final cause of Discipline is the efficient use of arms on the field of battle. Discipline is the result of an irksome educational process by which a man is taught to submit his wishes, his instincts, and, to a great extent, his personal liberty to the control of one who may be his inferior morally, mentally, and physically. It has also been cynically defined as the art of making a man more afraid of his own officers than of the enemy. Its function seems to be the formation of certain military qualities which Patriotism and the Sense of Duty are by themselves believed incapable of creating. It has always been considered an essential part of a soldier's training; but this view, though probably correct, is not confirmed by the South African War, in which an undisciplined force held its own for some years against greatly superior numbers of disciplined men. The ideal Army, patriotic, full of the sense of Duty, and perfect in discipline, would be invincible; but such an Army has never yet been seen. A deficiency of one or two of these qualities may be made up for by a fuller measure of the others. The history of each war will seem to indicate for a time the proportions in which the qualities should be blended, which is the essential, and whether any one of them can be omitted; but the inferences thus drawn from one war will probably be found misleading in the next war. The inference to be drawn from the South African War seems to be that the value of those military qualities which are created by Discipline and training has been over-rated, and that a passionate bigoted belief in the justice of a cause is a more potent factor in the making of a soldier. Even if every allowance be made for the strategical advantages possessed by the Boers, of fighting in their own land on interior lines in a sparsely populated country peculiarly adopted for _guerilla_, it is difficult to account for their success if the tests by which the efficiency of a European army is measured are applied to them. It may be that war has hitherto been regarded too exclusively as a statical and dynamical problem and that the moral element has been overlooked. It certainly was overlooked in South Africa; for the war which Lord Roberts in October, 1900, believed was practically at an end had in fact then run little more than one-third of its course. III. WAR CONSIDERED AS A BRANCH OF SPORT The astonishment, distress, chagrin and bewilderment caused by want of success, "regrettable incidents," and disasters, sometimes found consolation during the South African War in the foolish remark--The Germans would have done no better. What the German Army, which had not been actively employed for twenty-eight years, might have accomplished under the same conditions is a matter for sterile speculation which has little bearing on the case. But the German Army certainly had not been accustomed to look upon War as a branch of Sport or Athletics.