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THE STUDY OF MILITARY HISTORY. 
circumstances of our own time, draw influences with judgment, and 
make recorded facts and incidents; as it were, act as pegs in the 
memory on which to hang principles of value for every-day use. 
It is for this reason that I regret that we have now-a-days so much 
tactics and so little history in the courses of study our regimental 
officers have to go through, and that I would wish men to read more 
for the sake of acquiring general knowledge than because they may 
have to answer certain questions. 
I would have a cavalry officer familiar with the deeds of Seydlitz 
and Kellerman, Lasalle and Yon Bredow, remember, Bossbach, Zorn- 
dorf, Marengo, the pursuit after Jena, and the surprise of Yionville, 
and eager with an ambition to emulate such deeds as those. 
I think every gunner should know the story of Yittoria and Wagram 
Hasse's and Gniigge’s batteries at Gravelotte, of the “ battery of the 
dead” at Koniggratz, and should enter a battle animated and sustained 
by the remembrance of the great performances of his predecessors on 
those occasions. 
Similarly every infantryman should be persuaded of the invincibility 
of his arm, not because of the powers of the modern rifle which he may 
handle, but because his predecessors showed him the road to victory 
when they fought at Quatre Bras, at Inkerman, or at the Shipka Pass, 
To read for the purposes of the moment is only however one outcome 
of the spirit which has invaded many of our ideas and institutions in 
this nineteenth century, everywhere people look for quick returns 
brought about with a minimum expenditure of trouble or time, and there 
is thought to be no opportunity in these crowded days for the thoughtful 
and patient labour which characterised the methods of our fathers. 
Men now only wish to learn just what will be the most useful at the 
moment passing over them, and the systems of examining officers ac¬ 
cording to a progressive standard, has something to do with it. 
Officers too really are busy now when with their regiments, and naturally 
when pressed for time turn it to the best account for examination pur¬ 
poses. 
Thus it is that “ Tactics,” and that too in a very condensed and 
artificial form, has pushed history somewhat to one side, and that we 
find men learning by rote what is likely to be asked rather than what 
may be very valuable some day, but it is not so at the present moment. 
Thus it is that text-books are full of data as to the exact number of 
inches bullets will penetrate into various materials, and that minute 
calculations as to the exact time a certain force will take to move from 
one formation and get into another, or that necessary for the last man 
to move off parade when a force is making a march, fill the minds of 
students. 1 Or they learn by rote “ the characteristics ” of the various 
1 Napoleon’s method is here interesting, and is thus accounted by Jomini, “ Art of War.” 
“ Provided with a pair of dividers, opened to a distance by the scale of from 17 to 20 miles in a 
straight line (which made from 22 to 25 miles, taking into account the windings of the roads), 
bending over, and sometimes stretched at full length upon his map, where the positions of his 
corps and the supposed positions of the enemy were marked by pins of different colours, he was 
able to give orders for extensive movements with a certainty and precision which were astonishing. 
Turning his dividers about from point to point on the map, he decided in a moment the number 
of marches necessary for each of his columns to arrive at the desired point by a certain day, &c.” 
