The tactical discussions which immediately followed the war were conducted in the main by writers whose experience had been gained, not on the staff, but in the actual command of fighting units. Boguslawski, Laymann, Tellenbach, and May had been company leaders on the French or Bohemian battlefields. But even here the influence of the staff was considerable. Bronsart von Schellendorf, who wrote the reply to May's _Tactical Retrospect_, Von Scherff, whose essays on formal tactics were very widely read at the time of their publication (1873), and Meckel, whose treatise on tactics in 1881 condensed into a systematic shape the substantial results of the ten years' controversy, were all officers of the general staff. Thus it is hardly too much to say that for more than twenty years the Prussian general staff has done a great part of the military thinking of Europe. The school through which a Prussian officer must pass before he can become a general has now been described, at least in its most striking features. After five years' service as a lieutenant he has mastered the elementary duties, and assimilated the spirit of his class, with its ideals of work and intelligent but absolute obedience. In three years at the War Academy he has learned the nature of war, and acquired an insight into the conduct of the armies. At the same time he has been taught to deal in a practical way with practical questions, never allowing himself to shrink from the effort of forming a decision. He has now arrived at full maturity in frame, intelligence, and character, and spends the more active years of manhood in the higher studies of the great general staff, the executive and practical activities of command, and the comprehensive and instructive functions of the general staff of the division or the army corps. During these years and in all these varied occupations his energies are put forth to their full extent, for advancement can only be secured by valuable work in each successive sphere. By the time he attains to general rank he has acquired a vast and varied experience; a practised eye, whose rapid and penetrating glance on the march and in the field seems to the layman almost miraculous; and a sureness and swiftness of judgment which decides without fail in an instant nine-tenths of the questions which arise in the exercise of command.