It seems natural to say that if England wants victory on sea or land, she must provide herself with a Nelson or a Napoleon. The statement is quite true, but it requires to be rightly interpreted. If it means that a nation must always choose a great man to command its navy or its army it is an impossible maxim, because a great man cannot be recognised until his power has been revealed in some kind of work. Moreover, to say that Nelson and Napoleon won victories because they were great men is to invert the order of nature and of truth. They are recognised as great men because of the mastery of their business which they manifested in action. That mastery was due primarily to knowledge. Wordsworth hit the mark when, in answer to the question "Who is the Happy Warrior?" he replied that it was he-- "Who with a natural instinct to discern What knowledge can perform, is diligent to learn." The quality that made them both so valuable was that they knew the best that was known and thought in regard to the art of war. This is the quality which a nation must secure in those whom it entrusts with the design and the conduct of the operations of its fleets and its armies. There is a method for securing this, not by any means a new one, and not originally, as is commonly supposed, a German invention. It consists in providing the army and the navy with a General Staff or Department for the study, design, and direction of operations. In such a department Bourcet, Napoleon's master, spent the best years of his life. In such a department Moltke was trained; over such a department he presided. Its characteristic is that it has one function, that of the study, design, and direction of the movements in fighting of a fleet or an army, and that it has nothing whatever to do with the maintenance of an army, or with its recruiting, discipline, or peace administration. Its functions in peace are intellectual and educational, and in war it becomes the channel of executive power. Bourcet described the head of such a department as "the soul of an army." The British navy is without such a department. The army has borrowed the name, but has not maintained the speciality of function which is essential. In armies other than the British, the Chief of the General Staff is occupied solely with tactics and strategy, with the work of intellectual research by which Nelson and Napoleon prepared their great achievements. His business is to be designing campaigns, to make up his mind at what point or points, in case of war, he will assemble his fleets or his armies for the first move, and what the nature of that move shall be. The second move it is impossible for him to pre-arrange because it depends upon the result of the first. He will determine the second move when the time comes. In order that his work should be as well done as possible, care is taken that the Chief of the Staff shall have nothing else to do. Not he but