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He had a dowdy wife and a dowdy mind, and spent much of his time in town taking advantage of the army's lately exalted social position. Last of all was the general, who traversed the roads of the camp preceded by his flag a figure so austere, so removed, so magnificent, as to be scarcely comprehensible. December. Cool winds at night now, and damp, chilly mornings on the drill-grounds.
The famous "Middle-class Music-halls" faded quickly into the limbo of forgotten failures, and the most popular of public performers were those and they were not a few who forsook grease-paint for khaki, and posturing on stages for exercising on rifle-ranges and drill-grounds.
The supplies were being hurried aboard. The general had his men all the livelong day at the rifle-ranges or drill-grounds, for most of the brigade were raw volunteers who had been rushed to the point of rendezvous with scant equipment and with less instruction. The camps were thronged with men in all manner of motley as to dress and no little variety as to dialect.
The perpetual subject of practice on the drill-grounds, a cavalry engagement between two divisions in close formation, will hardly ever occur in war. Any unprejudiced examination of the present conditions must lead to this result, and counsels the cavalry arm to adopt a course which may be regarded as a serious preparation for war.
Being tall and upright and spare, like a Texan, it had an attitude toward them like that of a pioneer drill-master; it seemed to be standing out on the drill-grounds with the other houses all marshaled up before it and toeing the social line.
In the British army, as well as in the other modern armies, the soldier is supposed to understand nothing, know nothing, and do nothing but give obedience to the commands of his officers. The trained soldier learns little, and is supposed to learn little, of anything except the evolutions he is taught on the drill-grounds.
Several of our comrades were of course unfortunately compelled for several days to march on foot, though much against their wishes; for nothing could be more humiliating to a dragoon than to be trudging through the mud and dust, while his companions were gliding past him with their neighing steeds, on their way to the drill-grounds, or to any other post of duty.
When they went to Gallipoli it was said that they had no discipline; and certainly at first discipline did irritate them as a snaffle bit irritates a high-spirited horse. "Little Kitch," as the stalwart Anzacs called the New Army Englishman, thought that they broke all the military commandments of the drill-grounds in a way that would be their undoing.
I will also once more declare that it is wrong that the bulk of the training of the army cavalry should consist in the divisional cavalry exercises on the military drill-grounds.
The Papal palace, with its terrible Glacière, its chapel painted by Simone Memmi, its endless corridors and staircases, its torture-chamber, funnel-shaped to drown and suffocate so runs tradition the shrieks of wretches on the rack, is now a barrack, filled with lively little French soldiers, whose politeness, though sorely taxed, is never ruffled by the introduction of inquisitive visitors into their dormitories, eating-places, and drill-grounds.
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