22 
Land & Water 
May 2, 1918 
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LIEUTENANT GENERAL 
MAJOR GENERAL 
• 
BRIGADIER GENERAL 
COLONEL 
LIEUTENANT COLONEL 
MAJOR 
CAPTAIN 
FIRST LIEUTENANT 
Insignia of Rank, Tne Uiiited Sfat;s Army 
until he is exercised in the "combined tactics" of his own 
and all the other arms, so that the riflemen, rifle-bombers, 
bombers, and Lewis gunners can work together like the 
"pack" of a good football team. They are "specialists," 
but their teaching has one common denominator : every 
man, including the bombers, should be able to shoot and to get 
down to his 15 rounds a minute. In this way a platoon has 
a singular elasticity ; its four constituent units have each 
their special task, and at the same time have all a common 
adaptabiUty. The soldier of to-day has to be at one and 
the same time an expert and a good all-round infantryrrian. 
He has to be trained to act in large masses, and also to work 
on his own initiative. These are paradoxes ; but modern 
warfare is full of them. From the point of view of artillery 
the division is the unit, of machine guns and trench-mortars 
the brigade, of Lewis guns the platoon. At any moment, all 
this nice integration of parts may be dislocated, and men 
may find themselves fighting "on their own" in shell-holes 
until the co-ordination is whittled down to a couple of rifle- 
bombers working in pairs — the "gun" and his loader — like 
partridge-driving ; or to a handful of bombers doing a 
forward drive. In the same way, the fire-control of a Stokes 
gun battery, especially in attack, may be broken up 
into the detachment fire of a single gun carried forward 
without its legs and "pooped off" a few yards behind the 
bombers. And, therefore, though a soldier's education 
begins by making him automatic, it must always end by 
making him self-reliant and resourceful. 
The whole tendency of this war is to make the unit of self- 
containment smaller and smaller, whichever arm of the 
service it be. Originally it was the battalion, then the 
company, now the platoon. All this means that the indivi- 
dual soldier has to be more and more versatile, even while 
he becomes more and more specialised. A company, or even 
a platoon, must be able, in an emergency, to improvise its 
own field fortifications without waiting for the ingenious 
sapper; the men must be able not only to "consolidate," 
but to make loopholes and lay out barbed wire, which, by the 
way, is a science in itself. It is neither desirable not per- 
missible to say here how all these problems are worked out ; 
it is enough to say that the curriculum of the soldier, although 
not the method of teaching, is subject to constant change. 
He — and still more his officers— are being worked as they 
were never worked before, and, under the stress of modern 
warfare, the Army is becoming as technical a service as the 
Navy. On the whole, it has responded to these imperative 
exigencies with remarkable aptitude. The conscript is not 
as good an all-round soldier in a war of movement as the 
old regular, who was the product of years of trgiining ; but 
when it comes to specialisation, the Army has, in virtue of 
conscription, an almost unlimited field of choice in selecting 
men for the job they are bes.t quaUfied by civilian pursuits 
to do. In some directions, therefore, the new conscript is 
more teachable than the old pre-war recruit. 
More than that, the training of the new armies is flexible ; 
it has no Prussian rigidity about it. Thp Infantry Training 
Mamtal is no longer regarded as the beginning and end of 
wisdom. The recruit has to learn rules ; but, once he has 
learnt them, he is allowed a wide latitude in the way of 
exceptions. After he has learnt at the butts to shoot with 
one eye, he may, in practising an attack, be encouraged to 
shoot with two, for with two eyes 3'ou have the whole of the 
ground open to you, and can take in the Boche on your 
flank while getting your sights on the Boche in front. Having 
learnt to point and parry with the bayonet, and mastered 
the first and second butt exercises, he will probably be told 
eventually by the instructor that to "kick him anywhere" 
is the upshot of it all when it comes to the third. If he is a 
bomber he will be allowed to do what he likes with his left 
hand, so long as he has learnt how to "bowl overhand" or 
"put the weight" with his right. And if he is a sniper 
— that chartered libertine of a battalion — he can do things 
■all his own way. For, once you have learnt to do a thing 
well in the new Army, you will, within reasonable limits, be 
allowed to do it as you like. 
The soldier must begin by being docile, but if he wishes to 
excel he must end by being intelligent. He has not, like the 
officer, to be a student of tactics ; but he has, in his own way, 
to master that great principle of war which is to anticipate 
what the other fellow is hkely to do. If he is a sniper he 
wiU select all his positions, construct his loopholes, camou- 
flage his headgear with that principle always in his mind. 
But the principle is primarily one of the lessons of a "com- 
mand" ; it is one of those high matters which, like the 
hard dilemma of knowing when to follow an order and 
when to depart from it, is reserved for a higher order of 
intelligence than that imposed upon the soldier in the 
ranks. 
At last, there comes a day when the soldier is warned by 
the sergeant for an overseas draft. His blankets are returned 
to store, his kit is inspected, and an entry to that effect is 
made in his pay -book. The time has come for "marching 
out." Soon he will meet his enemy in the gate. Many 
things will come back to him as the train takes his draft up 
to railhead from the base ; he will reflect that the instructor's 
apparent asperity on the square, at the butts, and on the 
assault-course was inspired by a really conscientious desire 
to make a soldier of him, and he will find later that many a 
little trick of hand and eye which he was ordered with inexor- 
able persistency to try again will stand him in gOod stead, 
and may make all the difference between life and death. 
Happy he if he has learnt his lesson well. 
