It is curious how often people complain of the ignorance and narrowness of young officers, saying that they can think of nothing outside their regiments, unless it be polo or some other game in which the regiment is interested. No doubt it is better for men of any profession to know something, and the more the better, of subjects outside that profession; and yet what could more profitably occupy an officer's thoughts than the men and horses under his charge? Military routine can have no doubt a somewhat straitening and deadening effect upon officers, even as academic routine may injuriously affect the minds of school masters and professors; and no doubt there are officers who chafe under it. But the majority find more than sufficient interest in the study of their men, in the selection of the promising for promotion, the encouragement of the good, the improvement, suppression and elimination of the bad, the bringing on of the backward, and above all in honest endeavour to enter into the _thoughts_ of their men--a task so difficult that not one in ten thousand succeeds in mastering it. For they know that it is their business to lead men and not drive them to discipline, and to inspire such confidence between commanded and commander that even in the most desperate situation he may be able to say, _I can depend upon my men_.
But even those who tire of military routine in time of peace change their opinion when they go upon active service. In England they cannot see why all kinds of tiresome details should not be left to the sergeants, but in the field they soon discover that the men will listen to and trust no one but an officer. The non-commissioned officer does not suffice for them. He may be a veteran of eighteen years' service; but the men will follow a commissioned boy of eighteen fresh from Eton infinitely more readily than they will the non-commissioned veteran. It is a very remarkable fact, and to those who hold that all men are equal it is extremely unpalatable; but a fact beyond question it is, and not difficult of explanation. Men who by the fortune of their birth are exempted from the bitterness of the struggle for existence, trust their fellows because they have no reason to dread their competition; men who have been brought up in the thick of the fight with none but themselves to help them, see a possible competitor--it may be even a dangerous enemy--in every neighbour, and trust no one.