“It is curious to note how little attention has been devoted to the study of the fighting of this most bloody of modern wars; and yet it would seem that the records of these campaigns fought out to the bitter end by men of our own Anglo-Saxon races, would be a far more likely source of information, from which to deduce the theory of an attack formation specially designed to meet our needs, than the histories of struggles between French and Germans, or Russians and Turks. Von Moltke is reported to have said that ‘nothing was to be learnt from the struggle of two armed mobs.’ If that is really the case, which we venture to doubt exceedingly, the great strategist must ere this have been sorry he ever spoke, for, armed mobs or not, both Southern and Northern troops bore, and bore victoriously, a per centage of loss before which even the best disciplined troops in Germany, the Prussian Guard Corps, failed to make headway. It is of no relevance to the argument to say that the breech-loader was not then in use. When a man is hard hit himself, or sees his comrade rolled over, it never enters his head to consider whether the hit was scored by muzzle-loader or breech-loader; the fact itself, that he or the other man is down, is the only one he concerns himself with, and when the percentage of hits in a given time rises high enough, the attack collapses equally, no matter against what weapon it may be delivered. “Actually, though the armament was inferior, the per centage of hits was frequently far higher than in breech-loading campaigns. There is no action on record during recent years in which the losses rose so high, and in so short a time, as in the American fights.” After a brief description of Meagher’s attack at Fredericksburg, and Pickett’s charge at Gettysburg, Captain Maude continues: “Surely, Moltke never spoke of such gallant soldiers as an armed mob, seeing that they succeeded in driving an attack home against four times the per centage of loss that stopped the Prussian guard at St. Privat.... And assuming, for the moment, that the saying attributed to him is really true, we cannot help fancying that he must have often bitterly regretted it when watching his own men in the manœuvers of late years, attacking in what is really, practically the same formation which the armed mobs worked out for themselves.