In the matter of making each regiment as self-contained as possible, the French Army is about equal with the British. In a French regiment, signallers, scouts, and others are trained from the ranks of the regiment itself to undertake the special duties imposed on each of these branches of military activity. In the matter of scouting, and in such things as taking cover, trench-digging, the use of extended formations, etc., the French Army has benefited largely by the British war in South Africa, of which the lessons were studied quite as keenly as in the British Army itself, and the training of men was modified on experience thus gained by others. Again, French officers attached to the Russian and Japanese staff in the Russo-Japanese war brought back much practical knowledge which was applied in their own army, more especially with regard to fortifications, defensive positions, siege warfare, and the work of armies in close contact and in large masses. It may be said as a whole, with regard to the working of the army, that France has never hesitated to adapt the lessons taught by others to her own use, while there can be no doubt that the lessons learned from the failure of such armies as Napoleon the futile forced into action in 1870 have been taken to heart and applied, with a view to fitness for the struggle that is not yet ended. CHAPTER XII SOME INCIDENTALS The subject of disciplinary battalions is not a pleasant one in the opinion of the French soldier, but the formation of such battalions is a necessity in the conscript army of a nation which demands military service of all its citizens. For in such an army the criminal classes and bad characters are included with the rest, and, if they do not conform to military rules in a better way than they submit to the ordinary restrictions imposed on any law-abiding civil community, then some form of discipline must be adopted in order to coerce them. When the regimental authorities of any unit in the French Army have ascertained, by the repeated application of ordinary corrective methods, that it is impossible to make an efficient soldier of any man in the unit in question, the man concerned is taken before the _conseil de discipline_, which has power to recommend that he should be sent to service in the disciplinary battalion stationed in Algeria.