Late in the evening I saw a small party of horsemen moving rapidly from battalion to battalion immediately behind the front line. Riding by himself, a little in advance of the others, was a young man with a thin, sallow face, wearing _pince-nez_. He stopped frequently and spoke with the officers and men. When he had passed on, they followed him with their eyes and seemed to move more briskly about their business. To these rough men from all parts of Servia this brief visit had a special interest; the young man who rode alone and in front was the Crown Prince Alexander, and most of them were seeing him for the first time. In more senses than one the Crown Prince was alone that day. His exalted rank had conferred on him the command of an army; his extreme youth made it hard for him to impose his will on a staff of military experts. At the headquarters of the First Servian Army there was the usual percentage of senior officers whose peace training had taken from them any human or imaginative qualities they may ever have possessed; who regarded war as a science, not a drama; men without elasticity of mind, eternally seeking an analogy between their own situation, at any given moment, and some vaguely similar situation in the career of their favourite strategist (usually von Moltke). Since in war, at least, analogies are never perfect, such men lack quick decision and, almost invariably, they take the line of least resistance. During the afternoon preceding the evening visit of the Crown Prince to his troops, several influential and elderly officers had been advising retreat; they had studied the map carefully, and in their opinion no other course was left to the Commander of the First Army. All the text books confirmed this view, and in these books were embodied the great principles of strategy. They pointed out to Prince Alexander that he owed it to himself and his country to retire, as soon as possible, to a new position and fight again another day. They were absolutely sincere and were convinced that, since the Serbian left was in process of being turned, all the military experts would approve of what might, euphemistically, be termed “a strategic retirement.” Many great military reputations have been made by the skilful conduct of a retreat and, according to their lights, the advocates of such tactics on this occasion were not far wrong in their reasoning. Only outsiders judge by results; military experts live in a charmed and exclusive international circle, in which method is everything.