brigades and divisions—­i.e., in formations which could never occur in the great decisive campaigns of the future.  From time to time—­financial grounds unfortunately prevent it being an annual affair—­a corps manoeuvre is held, which also cannot be regarded as training for the command of “masses.”  Sometimes, but rarely, several army corps are assembled for combined training under veteran Generals, who soon afterwards leave the service, and so cannot give the army the benefit of any experience which they may have gained.

It cannot, of course, be denied that present-day manoeuvres are extraordinarily instructive and useful, especially for the troops themselves’, but they are not a direct training for the command of armies in modern warfare.  Even the so-called “Imperial Manoeuvres” only correspond, to a very slight extent, to the requirements of modern war, since they never take account of the commissariat arrangements, and seldom of the arrangements for sheltering, etc., the troops which would be essential in real warfare.  A glance at the Imperial Manoeuvres of 1909 is sufficient to show that many of the operations could never have been carried out had it been a question of the troops being fed under the conditions of war.  It is an absolute necessity that our officers should learn to pay adequate attention to these points, which are the rule in warfare and appreciably cramp the power of operations.  In theory, of course, the commissariat waggons are always taken into account; they are conscientiously mentioned in all orders, and in theory are posted as a commissariat reserve between the corps and the divisions.  That they would in reality all have to circulate with a pendulum-like frequency between the troops and the magazines, that the magazines would have to be almost daily brought forward or sent farther back, that the position of the field bakeries is of extreme importance—­these are all points which are inconvenient and troublesome, and so are very seldom considered.

In great strategic war-games, too, even in a theatre of war selected in Russia which excludes all living upon the country, the commissariat arrangements are rarely worked out in detail; I should almost doubt whether on such occasions the possibility of exclusive “magazine feeding” has ever been entertained.  Even smaller opportunities of being acquainted with these conditions are given to the officer in ordinary manoeuvres, and yet it is extremely difficult on purely theoretical lines to become familiar with the machinery for moving and feeding a large army and to master the subject efficiently.

The friction and the obstacles which occur in reality cannot be brought home to the student in theory, and the routine in managing such things cannot be learnt from books.