The German military authorities understand their people, and they know the process which men undergo in being inured to war. Therefore it is that they do not enforce resort to “cover” with so much solicitude as I have noticed our officers do. They know that in every company there are men who will “lie” if allowed too great independence of individual action; and “cover at all risks” impairs every link in the chain of supervision. Again, they know that it is good for soldiers to die a little occasionally. The dead, of course, are “out of it”; but their death does not discourage, but hardens their comrades. It seems brutal to write in this tone, but is not war all brutal? And it is the solid truth. It may be written down as an axiom that fire-discipline unaccompanied with casualties is weak. I remember standing with a German general before Metz watching a skirmish. The German battalion engaged happened to consist chiefly of young soldiers, and they were not very steady. The old General shrugged his shoulders and observed, “Dey vant to be a little shooted; dey vill do better next time.” All young soldiers want to be a “little shooted”; and it is only by exposing them somewhat, instead of coddling them for ever behind cover, as if cover, not victory, were the aim of the day’s work, that this experience can befall them. All soldiers are the better of being “blooded”; they never attain purposeful coolness till they have acquired a personal familiarity with blood and death. After the experience of St. Privat, which stimulated the Germans to the unprecedented feat of fundamentally altering their fighting tactics in the very middle of a campaign, no man would be foolish enough or homicidal enough to advocate a return to close-formation in these days of swift-shooting firearms. As little would one argue in favour of frequent war for the mere object of inuring soldiers to fire-discipline. But the later tactics unquestionably tell against the efficiency of young soldiers in their first experience of battle, when contrasted with the old. Most of Wellington’s men at Waterloo were green troops, yet they stood up manfully under the brunt of that long terrible day, and after the long endurance there was heart left in them for the final advance in line. They were thus steadfast because such training as they possessed had habituated them to no other prospect than the prospect, when they should be summoned to the real business, of standing squarely up and looking in the face an equally upstanding enemy. Now all our preliminary training is directed to forbidding men standing up at all, and inculcating upon them, with emphatic language, the paramount duty of dodging and sneaking. They must be good men indeed whom a course of such tuition will not demoralise. That it does demoralise, our recent military history goes clearly to show. Our catastrophe at Isandlwana was due partly to the error of employing loose formation against great masses of bold men,