Morning journal and courier., 1881-03-22
Military Men Must Keep Abreast With
 the Times.

(Sir Garnet Wolsely in the Nineteenth Centuryl There is class of officer who seems to
 believe that the world, as far as armies and military science are concerned, stands still they see around them the most marvellous changes effected by steam, electricity, and mechanical inventions, and they accept them as matter of course, ignoring or unconscious of the fact that all such discoveries and in
 ventions react upon armies and military sci ence, and that as education and the 1ntelli- gence which is it's grandchild spread through the social strata from which we obtain recruits, we obliged to treat them in different manner from that in which we dealt with their illiterate and stupid forefathers.
 The private soldier of the last century and even during our great struggle with Napoleon was treated by us in an almost brutal manner;
 we dealt with him as if he were an unreason- ing mechanism which, for very contrariness sake, went frequently out of order We caught him a sort of wild man, and in- stead of endeavoring to raise him in the scale of humanity, we brutaliZed him by treating him as unreasoning being. Those who would still wish to fog the soldier as the keeper does his willful spaniel, who are nev- CT tired of reminding us of the glories achieved by our troops under Wellington and of referring to that army that ''could do anything and march anywhere, :" forget the atrocious and fendish horrors of Badajos and of Ciudad Rodrigo; there is much ado because an occasional henroost may be robbed nowadays on the line of march dur ing operations in the field, while all remem- brance of the scenes of indiscipline during Moore's retreat to Corunna, or the great Duke's retreat to Lisbon, are entirely forgot ten or ignored. There is great deal of talk of the good old times, and of their glories, and of the imagined magnifcence of our sol diers then, of their splendid physical appear ance and of their high moral qualities of dis cipline, &c.; we are daily treated to compari- sons in heroic language between the soldier of to-day and the soldier of the beginning of this century; the murders and the robberies and the drunkenness of the soldiers of eighty and hundred years ago are forgotten, and we remember only their splendid achieve ments. In those days, as at present, splendid success was only secured when really able and scientific generals commanded in the field and then, as now, when incompetence directed our military operations, failure and disgraceful disaster were the result. It should never be forgotten that our army that won Waterloo was pronounced by it's great commander to be the worst he had ever commanded; while think it will be freely admitted by the student of military history that the physique and discipline of the little armies which are now only remem- bered by reason of the misfOrtunes and ca lamities which overlook them were often of the very highest order. It was the character and military attainments of their commander to which the difference in result is to be attributed The old soldier lives upon the past, and the young gentleman join ing a regiment is SO accustomed to hear his older brother officers, to whom he looks up as his masters and teachers, dilate upon the excellence of the previous genera tions of soldiers, and upon the failings and shortcomings of those he sees around him. that he adorts these views unhesitatingly and in an unquestioning spirit. Such is the in- fuence of discipline upon us that if our mili- tary rulers, by thought, word or action, allow it to get abroad and be generally under stood that any proposed reform or recently effected change is, in their opinion, contrary to our traditions and certain to be injurious in it's effects our older officers take up the cry, until it rings in every mess-house, and it's echo comes back to us from the morning room of every military club. Discipline is apt to make parrots of us all we have much less individuality than the members of civil professions.