Considering the many regulars used in organization and instruction in France, the number of regular officers who served at the front must be, if exception is made of the youngsters from West Point and the provisional regular officers, relatively small. Reacting to a "million men rising to arms in their shirt-sleeves," and to the popular conception of leadership as an officer rushing at the head of his men in a charge, Leavenworth held strictly to the idea of the chessboard system, which kept commanders, including regimental, in touch with their communications, instead of leading charges, the better to direct the tactical movements of their units. In the National Guard and National Army, the majority of the majors as well as the captains and lieutenants were from civil life; so, too, were the captains and lieutenants in the regular divisions, always excepting the regular officers, who did not average one out of six in the average regular battalion. No army staff was more given to the policy of alternating between line and staff than ours. Every officer on the staff felt that he had a right to lead a regiment or brigade before the war was over. Transfers were frequent. The result was gratifying to individual ambition. A line officer who had just learned field command took the place of a staff officer who was just becoming expert in his branch of staff work. The newcomer had to start in learning fundamentals when his predecessor had been under a strain to keep up with the rapid developments; but how could you deny Tom, who was once your lieutenant in the Philippines, his desire, after three months' confinement, to be "in it" for a while at the front? When he showed peculiar fitness for office work, the British and French would have kept him in an office. He had his daily exercise, and his periods of leave when he might recuperate from the mental strain, which was all the worse for a man whose heart was with the troops. The Germans, least of all inclined to consider the personal equation, had interchangeable corps staffs. When one became stale, it went into rest in the same manner as a division of infantry, while a fresh staff took its place. Their system was the same as having two office forces, interchanging at intervals, in a business where the offices were open night and day. We had not enough officers to allow holidays. All must serve double the usual office hours in any concern, Sundays included--work as long as there was work to do, snatching intervals of sleep. In this the Leavenworth men, I repeat, set all an industrious example. Their greatest fault first and last was lack of psychologic touch with the people of their country. They were too remote from the troops. "But you forget the men," as the C.-in-C. used to say to the chess-players.