Considering how valuable was the regular's professional training for combat, and considering too that only half of the regular officers ever reached France, it was surprising how many regular officers were sent from the front to Blois. The percentage of regulars who failed in action was said to be as large as the percentage of reserves. The Leavenworth group, aiming to be impartial in the ruthlessness which they thought their duty, declared that when a man failed to make good he went, whether regular or reserve. "If there's a reserve officer who can do my job better than I can, I want him to have it," said a regular colonel of thirty-five. "I'll give all I have and do my best wherever I am sent. That's service and duty. My country thought I was fit to be an officer. It paid me to serve where I could serve best. What is the use of holding to the clannish idea that any regular is better than a reserve? That isn't the idea of efficiency. If a man who has served only six months is better than a man who has served thirty years, the old regular ought not to growl. He ought to feel ashamed. He is beholden to his country for having given him a livelihood for thirty years. He could not have earned as good a one in any other occupation." He was the same officer who had spoken his convictions after my remarks at the maneuver at Leavenworth. Of humble origin, proving the democratic test by his conduct, he was an honor to the profession of arms,--as he would have been to any profession. The whole army recognized his ability. Of course no reserve officer or National Guard officer could be better than he; his subordinates were proud to serve under him. If his reward could have been judged by a monetary standard, he earned all the pay he had ever received from the government by one month's service in France. He would return to a major's rank under mediocre officers, whose work he now directed from the staff. Had he made the remarks which I have just quoted to reserve officers when any regulars were present, even his ability would not have saved him from the charge of disloyalty to the clan. So the strain on class A men in the staff or in the line was heavy. As Leavenworth men, the Leavenworth men stood together, thought the observing reserves--and with them, of course, I include National Guard officers--while the regulars, forming up against the magic inner circle, stood together as regulars in the magic outer circle.