408 
THE STUDY 0E MILITARY HISTORY. 
forefathers suffered and accomplished in the past that we should make 
our effort to rise to mighty deeds in the future. 
Nor should the mental nourishment offered to our boys be too 
concentrated or boiled down to the severely utilitarian dimensions 
of an essence. 
There may be as much information in a paragraph as in a chapter, 
as much or more food in a meat lozenge or two as in a mutton chop, 
but for all that, in spite of theory, the one will be more welcome and 
more beneficial to a man mentally or physically hungry than the other. 
And what we want, moreover, is to teach officers to face responsibility 
freely not to be always trying to remember what the text-book says, 
but rather to be guided by what the lie of the ground and the cir¬ 
cumstances of the moment seem to dictate. 
They must read, but we cannot too often repeat that they must be 
taught to realise how circumstances may modify schemes and how what 
may have been wise in one case is not j udicious in another. I have already 
spoken of YonMoltke’s “ Tactical Problems.” There is one example in 
them of particular interest. It is the old difficulty of crushing an 
opponent between two converging forces which is being discussed and 
we must bear in mind that the great strategist's own plans in 1866 
have been hostilely criticised by some. 
That he fully appreciated the risks involved and yet gave due 
weight to the altered conditions of warfare brought about by the 
telegraph is amply evidenced when we hear him say 
“ If we succeed in attacking him on two sides and in affecting the 
junction of two columns on the battle-field, the greatest results are 
certainly to be expected. So we have done, for example, at Konig- 
gratz in 1866, but is it permissible to suppose this here? No; the 
enemy will evade such an attack, or assume the offensive himself, in 
order to fall upon one of our separate bodies with superior numbers.” 
Again, who can be more full of practical common sense than this 
great student in his following remarks on another problem ?— 
“ Gentlemen, you can do that only on paper, not in reality; there 
it would be quite different. Others again have shifted the bivouac in 
the evening. Gentlemen, imagine the situation as it is in reality. 
The division only moved into bivouac in the evening and, therefore, 
after a long march ; the kitchens are dug, the kettles are on the fire. 
Then comes a General Staff Officer and says : f The bivouac is to be 
shifted, you must move a little bit further/ Then the men must start 
again, the horses must be harnessed, the meat cannot be boiled. One 
does not really do so in reality.” 
Now it is because it promotes the constant reference of what is pro¬ 
posed to be done to what actually has been done in war, the judicious 
weighing of what is possible with what is practical, that makes military 
history so valuable. The knowledge we derive from it should be regarded 
as a great storehouse of experiences from which, if we only possess the 
catalogue, we can obtain an example which, considered with due regard 
to the circumstances of the moment, may help us to a sound conclusion. 
What we want to do then first of all is to fix military history in the 
