The student of military history sees that the weak points in the British army on the peace establishment had been that systematic and continuous preparation for active war had not been insisted on. It needed the organizing genius of Roon and Moltke in the Prussian army to make such a mobilization as that of 1866 and that of 1870, and to show what is possible in preparing an armed host to take the field. Preparation for war has had a totally different meaning since those campaigns, and the start of a day or two in reaching the field was shown to involve the winning and losing a great campaign. As matters stood in 1854, however, the great military powers of Europe should be considered as having only the raw material of armies as they had depots of military stores, and true organization in every department had to be effected after a declaration of war. Studying it in 1863, it seemed to me that the only advantage England or France would have had over us at the outbreak of the Rebellion would have been in the greater number of men partly drilled and the greater quantities of arms and ammunition in store. Kinglake taught us that others would have had to go through most of the discouragements we had experienced, and that our aptitude in learning had been perhaps greater than theirs would have been. His unreserved disclosure of the errors and the miseries of the siege of Sebastopol was infinitely more instructive than any history which hid the humiliating facts and covered all with the glamour and glory of the final success. His faithful dealing was in the line of true discipline, though the reading of his story must have been a sore chastisement of spirit for many an English soldier and statesman. It was more effective than the comments of any "war correspondent," however capable; for it was free from every suspicion of unfriendliness, and was written with the fullest access to official evidence. I cannot help believing that the book was no small factor in the general movement in Europe toward a much more scientific comprehension and a much better practical mastery of the elements of army organization and administration in times of peace.