And I must say that our officers have at their tongues' ends the whole of the principle that is embodied in that strange little book, the drill regulations. As soon as you have got beyond the mere parade-ground work (and that is all the civilian ever sees) the book brings you to a region where nothing else is considered than the one thing, attack, attack, attack. There is something very grim and inexorable in this primer of war, this A B C of the principles of destruction. And if the innocent little pocket manual contains a codification, so condensed as to be amazing, of the ways to slay your enemy, the officers are ready with every possible amplification of its dry paragraphs. Get forward, always get forward, is their intention. Make your fire effective, make it destructive, make it overwhelming. With word, with blackboard plan and section, with theory, with practical illustration, each night they lay before us some new field of this really awful knowledge. We study it eagerly. Two years ago I should have been horrified at these doctrines that they preach. Today I regard knowledge of them, by a sufficient number of able-bodied men, as the great need of the country. So much, dear mother, of things which to speak of in detail would only pain your kind heart. As to the men that teach us, I can say that they improve upon acquaintance. Each of them, the captain and lieutenant, has his own way of teaching. In the lieutenant a coolness of statement that seems to imply a calm unshakableness, as of one who has measured all risks and sees that they amount to nothing. In the captain equal clearness but more fire. Both see that the only safety is in attack. They answer our questions quite differently, the lieutenant with a crisp completeness that leaves nothing to inquire but much to ponder on, the captain with an illuminating phrase that humanizes everything and brings instant understanding. Their men will go wherever they send them in a fight, for the lieutenant because they know he must be right, for the captain because they feel it. We never, I think, can know the lieutenant very well, because of that quality which I saw in him at his first appearance before us, an aloofness that taunts us into the determination to please him. The captain I am sure we know already, a worker, a driver, but one who shows us that he understands our mistakes by the very keenness of his irony. "I have found you men to place the hip anywhere between the armpit and the knee. So I will place it for you at the watch pocket. That is your official hip, gentlemen." "Yes, skirmishers in Europe are now wearing steel helmets. But if you men don't better learn to keep under cover you won't need steel helmets, you'll need battleships." "You can't take too many precautions in the use of your guns. In this game with me out in front, I'm an advocate of safety first."