WAR
class—a slightly taller sort of boy as ill-taught as they are in all that concerns the realities of life, ignorant of how to get food, how to get water, how to keep fever down and strength up, ignorant of his practical equality with the men beside him, carefully trained under a clerical headmaster to use a crib, play cricket rather nicely, look all right whatever happens, believe in his gentility, and avoid talking "shop." . . . The major you see is a man of the world, and very pleasantly meets the grey general's eye. He is, one may remark by the way, something of an army reformer, without offence, of course, to the Court people or the Government people. His prospects—if only he were not going to be shot—are brilliant enough. He has written quite cleverly on the question of Recruiting, and advocated as much as twopence more a day and billiard-rooms under the chaplain's control; he has invented a military bicycle with a wheel of solid iron that can be used as a shield; and a war correspondent and, indeed, any one who writes even the most casual and irresponsible article on military questions is a person worth his cultivating. He is the very life and soul of army reform, as it is known to the governments of the grey—that is to say, army reform without a single step towards a social revolution. . . .
So the gentlemanly old general—the polished drover to the shambles—rides, and his doomed column march by, in this vision that haunts my mind.
I cannot foresee what such a force will even attempt to do against modern weapons. Nothing can happen but the needless and most wasteful and pitiful
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