There is no doubt that the English-speaking peoples should stand together. But my recent experience at the seat of war, in London, and at other European capitals, has convinced me, against my will, that we must be slow in having faith that England is our friend. If the occasion required she would not hesitate to point her guns towards us, and her friendship would be turned to hostility in an hour. More true friendliness towards America exists in Germany or Russia to-day than in England. There is a serious fallacy in the premise that because we speak the language of England we are more closely allied to that country than to any other. To return from the digression, the army officer of to-day, to be a complete success, must be exceedingly versatile in his accomplishments. He must not only be a careful student of the science of war, but he must also be a thorough business man. He must not only understand the tactics of attack and defense, but he must be able to tell the quality of hay and of butter. He must understand weights and measures as accurately as an ordinary shop-keeper. Real war of this day has a great deal of everything except fighting. Hundreds of men and officers go through an entire campaign and never hear a shot fired; instead, they study columns of figures, great sheets of warehouse returns, and manifold way-bills of freight shipments. They may worry over the price of wheat or the weight of live stock on the hoof, but never over bullets or bayonets. The only orders they give are written on little slips of “flimsy,” such as you see the station agent hand into the cab to the engineer just before the train pulls out. The only possible difference between this sort of an officer and a regular business man is that the officer wears a uniform and works much harder for less money.