As senior officers get on in the service, they must not be allowed to forget what they have previously learnt, a thing which is now only too common. It is essential that they should be practised in peace in commanding troops, and not be mere administrators, inspectors, spectators, and umpires. They should therefore be in a position to spend most of their time with troops in the field and in cantonments. With our military system the command of troops is at present almost entirely in the hands of the regimental, brigade, divisional, corps and district commanders.[31] Thus our infantry and cavalry regiments used to be under five masters. But, in the words of the proverb, too many cooks spoil the broth, and in war all was not for the best in all our regiments. Often while the ingredients and the fire left nothing to be desired, the cooks did not know what to do. How can such a state of things be explained? It will be said that the selection of commanders was not always happy. That is true; but it must be remembered that selections had to be made from those men who were qualified according to the regulations and the reports drawn up by various commanding officers. In some cases seniority was considered to be by itself a qualification for promotion. Efforts of a sort were undoubtedly made to get the best men we had, but they were insufficient. All the commanders in the five degrees of our military hierarchy are so occupied with their daily work of routine and correspondence, while many are so overburdened with the administrative details of their appointments, that they have little time to attend to the business of actual war. Yet, as they get on in the service, more knowledge of war is required of them. The short periods of concentration in summer, with only a few days of instructional work on both sides, give little practice in command, and at other times the number of responsible duties connected with administration places that art on a far higher plane than mere soldiering. And what is most important is that the whole of our service—of our lives almost—is spent doing things which do not go to form character. Of the five posts above mentioned, only two—the divisional and corps commanders—are in any way independent, and their occupants are immersed in office work. The relative amount of time spent on the different sorts of duties tends to turn the regimental commander into an administrator rather than a fighter, while a brigade commander has absolutely no independence; in fact, his absence or presence is scarcely noticed. Finally, the same tendency to produce office men and bureaucrats is noticeable even in the work of those on the highest rungs of the ladder—the general officers in command of military districts. Instances might be multiplied of men who, though long in charge of military districts, never once commanded troops on manœuvres, and for several years never even got astride a horse.