Inkermann against the Russians amounted to 7464 officers and men. Of these, when the long fierce day was done, no fewer than 2487 had fallen, just one-third of the whole number. The manner in which our soldiers successfully contended against fearful odds in this battle is a phenomenal example of fire-discipline of the grand old dogged type. It is but one, however, of the many proofs that the world has no stauncher fighting-man than is the British soldier intrinsically. But I think it would be difficult to convince the mind of an impartial man that the British soldiers who, at Tel-el-Kebir, “recoiled even to the edge of the entrenchment” under the stress of a “hurricane of bullets” fired high and of a loss of 2 per cent, could have borne up and conquered under such a strain of sustained and terrible punishment as that through which the Prussian Guard struggled to the goal of victory at St. Privat. And if not, why not? There was a larger proportion of veterans among the Prussians at St. Privat than in the Highland Brigade at Tel-el-Kebir, and that gave a certain advantage, doubtless, to the former. Some would lean on the superior “citizenhood” of the Prussian over the British soldier; but our Highland regiments are exceptionally respectably recruited. Yet I venture to set down as the main distinction that, while the Prussian soldier of 1870 was a soldier of the “shoulder-to-shoulder” era, the British soldier of 1882 was a creature of the “get-to-cover” period. Then, it may be urged, the Prussian soldier of to-day--creature, nay, creator as he is of this new order of things--is as incapable of repeating St. Privat as the British soldier of to-day is of rivalling that stupendous feat. No. It is true the German is no longer a “shoulder-to-shoulder” man, but he is not drilled with so single an eye to cover-taking (and, I might add, cover-keeping) as is our British Thomas Atkins. He is trained to expect to be “a little shooted” as he goes forward; he has better-experienced non-commissioned officers to supervise the details of that advance than our soldier has; his individuality is more sedulously brought out. In a word, everything with him makes toward the development in him of a higher character of fire-discipline even in his first initiation into bullet-music.