An army which has preserved the absurd parade schritt, an exercise which is painful to the bystander, as he feels that it is making fools of brave men, must have a tendency to throw back to earlier types. These Germans have been trained in peace and upon the theory of books. In all that vast host there is hardly a man who has stood at the wrong end of a loaded gun. They live on traditions of close formations, vast cavalry charges, and other things which will not fit into modern warfare. Braver men do not exist, but it is the bravery of men who have been taught to lean upon each other, and not the cold, self-contained, resourceful bravery of the man who has learned to fight for his own hand. The British have had the teachings of two recent campaigns fought with modern weapons--that of the Tirah and of South Africa. Now that the reserves have joined the colors there are few regiments which have not a fair sprinkling of veterans from these wars in their ranks. The Pathan and the Boer have been their instructors in something more practical than those imperial grand manoeuvres where the all-highest played with his puppets in such a fashion that one of his Generals remarked that the chief practical difficulty of a campaign so conducted would be the disposal of the dead. Boers and Pathans have been hard masters and have given many a slap to their admiring pupils, but the lesson has been learned. It was not show troops, General, who, with two corps, held five of your best day after day from Mons to Compiègne. It is no reproach to your valor, but you were up against men who were equally brave and knew a great deal more of the game. This must begin to break upon you, and will surely grow clearer as the days go by. We shall often in the future take the knock as well as give it, but you will not say that we are a slow army if you live to chronicle this war, nor will your imperial master be proud of the adjective which he has demeaned himself in using before his troops had learned their lesson. *The South African Lesson.* The fact is that the German Army, with all its great traditions, has been petrifying for many years back. They never learned the lesson of South Africa. It was not for want of having it expounded to them, for their military attache--"'im with the spatchcock on 'is 'elmet,'" as I heard him described by a British orderly--missed nothing of what occurred, as is evident from their official history of the war. And yet they missed it, and with all those ideas of individual efficiency and elastic independent formation which are the essence of modern soldiering. Their own more liberal thinkers were aware of it. Here are the words which were put into the mouth of Güntz, the representative of the younger school, in Beverlein's famous novel: