[A] Of the two articles which follow, the first ("The Square Jaw") was written on the 9th of December, during the crisis caused by the successive resignations of Mr. Lloyd George and Mr. Asquith. The second ("The Moral of the British Armies") was written on the 19th of the same month, the day after Germany made her official offer of peace. The British soldier does not concern himself with Politics. It is not in his character to do so; moreover, any such conduct is against the rules of his profession. And so, since discipline "is the first weapon of Armies," the British soldier respects it above everything else. The Englishman has a passion and a profound respect for method. Method requires that Politics should be the business of Ministers and Politicians, and that war should be carried on by soldiers. Method, says the Englishman, demands that everyone should stick to his own work and his own place. Without this, anarchy must ensue. Now there cannot well be anything less anarchical than the British Army. It is their order and discipline which most powerfully and most quickly impress the Frenchman who is permitted to live for a time among the Armies of England. These qualities, let me hasten to add, are also the least superficial, and thus afford the surest test of the value of these Armies. Observe that it is not by collecting together a body of indifferent natures, passive temperaments and personalities more or less irresponsible, that this order and discipline have been infused into the British Army. The level of capacity of this Army is, moreover, by no means a low one; for it is one of the most intelligent Armies in Europe or in the whole world. The common soldier is not of one class, to the exclusion of all others. He does not represent one section only of British opinion. His corporate mind is therefore in no way a limited one. As a volunteer, he thronged into England, at the beginning of the war, from every quarter of the globe, and by this voluntary act at once proclaimed his intelligence. To-day, as a conscript, he represents, more than ever before, the completeness of his country's will. As for the officers, who differ from our own in their essentially aristocratic character, in them we see the direct expression of all those qualities of brain and heart which distinguish the leading elements of British society. And so, if this army does not concern itself with Politics, if it is thoroughly disciplined, if it contents itself with "making war," it is because it prefers to do these things.