374 
SUBALTERN OFFICERS. 
and pension to non-commissioned-officers generally, and by improving 
their position in other ways so as to secure the services of a really high 
class of men.* In any case, however, it is surely upon the commis¬ 
sioned officers of the army that most of the burden and responsibility 
of training recruits will in future fall. Apart from the fact that there 
is difficulty in obtaining efficient non-commissioned officers, the work of 
instructing soldiers has of late years become so enhanced in importance, 
that it seems to be impossible any longer to relegate it to sergeants. 
As Sir Garnet Wolseley not long ago most forcibly pointed out, if 
our army is to be made fit to meet a European Army on the field of 
battle, it can only be done by the regimental officers undertaking to 
train it themselves. t ff The Army now is the greatest and most 
important of our national schools, of which in future the officers will be 
the masters/' 
2 . It is necessary to bear constantly in mind the significance of the 
change which has come over the spirit of modern military training. 
When soldiers fought in rigid lines or massive columns, their training 
was almost entirely mechanical. Success depended upon the cohesion 
of the mass, rather than upon the exertions of individuals. In the days 
of shock tactics indeed a soldier may be said to have had no individ¬ 
uality ; he was only the part of a machine which was kept in working 
order by the maintenance of stern discipline, by strict attention to 
physical exercises, and by constant practice in mechanical drill. There 
was no necessity for a higher training, and therefore none was attemp¬ 
ted. When a recruit joined all that he had to learn was how to put his 
legs forward and present arms at the word of command, and the 
knowledge requisite to enable him to do this could very well be 
imparted to him by a subordinate non-commissioned officer. Conse¬ 
quently he was handed over at once to the drill sergeant, and did not 
come under the eye of his officers until he was pronounced fit to join 
the ranks of his troop or company. His education was completed in 
the barrack room, where he was soon assimilated and absorbed by his 
comrades, and in due course of time, without any further effort on his 
part, took his place in the ranks as a trained and disciplined soldier. 
3. It is otherwise now. The days of shock tactics were numbered at 
Sadowa. Then it was that all Europe understood, what indeed the 
Germans had long before realised, that a complete revolution had 
been affected in the principles and practice of modern warfare. J The 
*In answer to a question addressed to him last session in the House of Commons, 
Mr. Childers said that this matter was under his immediate consideration. 
f The Nineteenth Century, March 1878. “ England as a Military Power in 1854 and in 
1878,” by Major-General Sir Garnet Wolseley. 
$ The significance of the change which then took place has been pointed out by many 
writers, but by no one with so much force as by Brevet-Major Maurice, R.A., the author of 
the Wellington Prize Essay. 
“ The radical change which has taken place in tactics is, as it was at the time when the 
system of Frederick gave place to that of Napoleon, one above all things in organization. 
But the change is an infinitely more vital and complete one now than then. If a flexible 
chain was then substituted for a bar of iron, it remained dead metal still, more pliable 
under the hands of the one man who wielded it, each link capable of a certain degree of 
independent motion, but essentially it was intended to obey only mechanically the impulse 
that was imparted to it. We have to provide a new substance. A living organism has to 
take the place of a material instrument. It must work under the inspiration of the 
regulating head, rather than move with mechanical precision in the directing hand.” The 
Wellington Prize Essay, page 37. 
