In average manoeuvres, two forces, designated respectively as a blue and a red force, or in some way distinguished from each other by marks which enable men to tell "friend" from "enemy," are set to face each other in a certain limited area. Each force is expected to do its best to render the other ineffective as a fighting force, and the conditions are made to resemble those of real warfare as nearly as possible. It must be said, however, that up to the present, no nation in its military manoeuvres has ever allowed sufficiently for casualties; as an instance may be cited the case of a regiment which, on a certain set of manoeuvres in France, was surrounded and entirely put out of action early in the course of the operations. Had the business been real, the men of that particular regiment would all have been either dead or prisoners, but they were allowed to continue to count in the force to which they belonged, and the commander of the opposing force simply scored up so much credit for having achieved a brilliant military operation. Of course, from the point of view of training officers and men, for which manoeuvres are specially designed, it was quite right that the officers and men of this unit should take part in the operations up to the last day, but, since men do not resurrect in this fashion after a real battle, it may be said, viewing the matter disinterestedly, that there was no further tactical value in the scheme carried out. The opposing forces were so constituted for the operation as to be of about equal strength, and the presence or absence of the regiment referred to would have been quite sufficient to turn the scale one way or the other--and yet they were allowed to take part after having been theoretically wiped out of existence! This anomalous method of procedure is not peculiar to the French Army, however, but is practically common to the armies of all nations. The nature of the work which the conscript has to perform on manoeuvres is purely a matter of luck. For instance, the force in which one is serving may be compelled, in order to carry out the scheme of its commander, to execute a wheeling or turning movement to either flank, and, supposing a wheel to the right flank is required, then the men on the right flank have very little marching to do, and very little work, since their part in the scheme is to wait for the wheeling flank to come round. An amusing old scamp whose service began when the five years' law was still in force, and who served in a French infantry battalion up to a short time ago, used to allege that he was once right-hand man of an army corps which wheeled in this fashion with the right flank for a pivot. "I stood for three weeks," he alleged, "on that flank, waiting for the outer flank to come round, and looking up the line to see that the men kept their dressing." The "dressing," it should be explained, is a term used in both the French and British Army for the keeping of line by the men.