7 P. M.--A great day. It was Donkelsdorp over again. Substitute the
Tenth Army for the Traffordshire's baggage wagon, swell Honks
Spruit into the roaring Wang-ho, elevate Oom Kop into the frowning
scarp of Pyjiyama, and you have it. The Staff were obviously
gratified when I told them about Donkelsdorp.
The Rooskis came over the crest-line in a huddle of massed
battalions, and Gazeka was after them like a rat after a terrier. I
knew that his horse-guns had no horses (a rule of the Japanese
service to discourage unnecessary changing of ground), but his men
bit the trails and dragged them up by their teeth. Slowly the
Muscovites peeled off the steaming mountain and took the funicular
down the other side.
I wonder what my friend Smuts would make of the Yen-tai coal mine?
Well, well.--_"Something accomplished, something done."_
The technical manner is more difficult of acquisition for the beginner,
since it involves a knowledge of at least two European languages. It is
(a) cardinal rule that all places should be described as _points
d'appui_, the simple process of scouting looks far better as
_Verschleierung_, and the adjective "strategical" may be used without
any meaning in front of any noun.
But the military manner was revolutionized by the war. Mr. Belloc
created a new Land and a new Water. We know now why the Persian
commanders demanded "earth and water" on their entrance into a Greek
town; it was the weekly demand of the Great General Staff, as it called
for its favorite paper. Mr. Belloc has woven Baedeker and geometry into
a new style: it is the last cry of historians' English, because one was
invented by a German and the other by a Greek.
WINTER MIST
_By_ ROBERT PALFREY UTTER
Robert Palfrey Utter was born in 1875, in Olympia, Washington. He
graduated from Harvard (I am sorry there are so many Harvard men in
this book: I didn't know they were Harvard men until too late) in
1898 and took his Ph.D. there in 1906. After a varied experience,
including editorial work on the _Youth's Companion_, reporting on
the New York _Evening Post_, ranching in Mexico and graduate study
at Harvard, he went to Amherst, 1906-18, as associate professor of
English. He was on the faculty of the A. E. F. University at
Beaune, France, 1919; and in 1920 became associate professor of
English at the University of California.
Mr. Utter has contributed largely to the magazines, and has
published _Guide to Good English_ (1914), _Every-Day Words and
Their Uses_ (1916), and _Every-Day Pronunciation_ (1918).
Former students of his at Amherst have told me of the lasting
stimulus his teaching has given them: that he can beautifully
practise what he preaches of the art of writing, this essay shows.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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