Excerpt from The British Army From Within At the best, there is much in the work that a soldier is called on to do which is beyond his under standing, in the first years of his service. One consequence of this is that he learns to do things without questioning their meaning, and thus acquires a habit of obeying; this, up to a few years ago, was the Object of military training to instil into the soldier unquestioning obedience to orders, and the sentence obedience is the first duty of the soldier, gained currency and labelled the soldier as a mere cog in a great machine, one whose duty lay in obeying as did that Roman sentinel at Pompeu. One of the chief lessons of the South African war, however, was that such obedience was no longer the first duty of the soldier he must obey, no less than before, but scientific warfare demands an understanding obedience, and not the unquestioning, die-at-his post fidelity of old time. The recruit 'of to-day must be taught not only to obey, but to understand, and by that fact the work of his instructors, and his own work as well, are largely increased. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.