Fortescue’s words may perhaps seem exaggerated: smartness and discipline are not necessarily the same thing. But they are nearly allied, and there is perhaps no greater mistake made by civilians in judging soldiers than the contempt for drill and “the barrack-yard” which is so readily expressed. Henderson writes in ‘The Science of War’: “It is unfortunately to be apprehended that few, except professional soldiers, understand the nature or the value of discipline.” And he shows very clearly how necessary is the “habit of obedience” for efficient action in war. It was not for nothing that the great American soldier Stonewall Jackson began his career in the Civil War by drilling his undisciplined soldiery until he made himself detested by the officers and men who afterwards learnt to worship him. His brigade stood “like a stone wall” in their first battle when all was melting around them, and earned him the splendid nickname which has become immortal. History teems with instances of the supreme value of the trained soldier in war. Never was it shown more conspicuously than in that wonderful month of the retreat from Mons, when the little army of British regulars went back day after day before the overwhelming numbers of their enemy, only to turn on him at the end and prove to him that in spite of all their losses and sufferings their spirit and efficiency were still unbroken. “It is open to those in whose ears the very name of discipline smacks of slavery, to assert that a powerful instinct of obedience dwarfs the intellect, turns the man into a machine, and rusts his power of reasoning; and in this there is a shadow of truth, but it is only a shadow.” It is a question which has been often debated, and in which, _primâ facie_, the contemptuous critic seems to have much right on his side; but to few who have seen war will his view commend itself. The Regiment which shows up well in the manœuvres of the parade-ground will rarely fail to show itself efficient in the field. Like everything else, the principle is capable of abuse, and may be carried too far, but it is a sound principle in the main. Certainly the squadron which won Fortescue’s admiration went very straight when it was tried a few years later in something more than escort duty. [Illustration: THE QUEEN AT AGRA]