Hence, “a different order of Generalship,” suggested by the editorial quoted, implies either a higher or a lesser degree of ability in the “general of the future”; and as obviously, it is impossible that he can do worse than many already have done, it is necessary to assume that the commander of tomorrow will be an improvement over his predecessors. Consequently, to the military mind it becomes of paramount interest to inquire as to the form and manner in which such superiority will be tangibly and visibly manifested, viz.: Will the general of the future be a better general than Epaminondas, Alexander, Hannibal, Caesar, Gustavus Adolphus, Turenne, Eugene, Frederic, Washington, Napoleon, Von Moltke? Will he improve upon that application of the principles of strategy and tactics to actual warfare which comes down to us of today, stamped with the approval of these superlative military geniuses? Will the general of the future know a better way for making war than acting against the enemy’s communications? Will he devise a better method of warfare than that whose motive is the concentration of a superior force upon the strategetic objective? Will the processes of his prime logistic operations be preferable to those of men who won their victories before their battles were fought, by combining with their troops the topography of the country, and causing rivers and mountains to take the place of corps d’armee? Will the general of the future renounce as obsolete and worthless that military organization founded centuries before the Christian Era, by the great Theban, Epaminondas, the father of scientific warfare; that system adopted by every captain of renown and which may be seen in its purity in the greater military establishments from the days of Rome to the present Imperial North German Confederation? Will the general of the future renounce as obsolete and worthless that system of Minor Tactics utilized by every man who has made it his business to conquer the World? Will he propose to us something more perfect than the primary formation of forces depicted in Plate XIII of the Secret Strategical Instructions of Frederic II? Will the general of the future renounce as obsolete and worthless those intricate, but mathematically exact, evolutions of the combined arms, which appertain to the Major Tactics of men who are remembered to this day for the battles that they won? Will he invent processes more destructive than those whereby Epaminondas crushed at Leuctra and Mantinea the power of Sparta, and the women of Lacedaemon saw the smoke of an enemy’s camp fire for the first time in six hundred years? Than those whereby Alexander, a youth of eighteen, won Greece for his father at Chaeronea and the World for himself at Issus and Arbela? Than those whereby Hannibal destroyed seriatim four Roman armies at Trebia, Thrasymenus, Cannae and Herdonea?