OUR INFANTRY. 107 



because placed under incompetent com- 

 manders ? and if nothing in the meantime 

 be done to prevent this, it "will occur again 

 and again. 



Doubtless under our present system, when 

 a clever officer in a time of war does happen 

 to get placed on the staff, he has a good 

 chance of rising high in his profession. What 

 I complain of under this system is, that though 

 a clever officer may get on the staff, he does 

 so not on account of his fitness, but on 

 account of his connections. 



Such a system may be approved by those 

 who profit by it, but to the nation it is very 

 mischievous. 



No system can be devised calculated to 

 measure with absolute exactitude the extent of 

 an officer's genius for war which stops short of 

 placing him at the head of an army in the field, 

 but it is not on that account less desirable to 

 know all that is ascertainable of an officer's 

 fitness for such an important post before he is 

 placed in it. 



The knowledge which the system here re- 

 commended requires in officers who are to fill 

 high military posts, differs wholly from the 



