ng with the main personalities, learn from them about the
facilities for processing copy, and soak up everything they have to
say about private and professional procedures. Then as the ropes grow
gradually familiar in the grasp, confidence and nervous energy come
flooding back.

Surely there is a close parallel between this experience and that of
the journeyman moving from the familiar soil of civilianism to the
_terra incognita_ of military life. But there is also the marked
difference that everyone he meets can tell him something that he needs
to know. More particularly, if he has the ambition to excel as a
commander of men, rather than as a technician, then the study of human
nature and of individual characteristics within the military crowd
become a major part of his training. That is the prime reason why the
life of any tactical leader becomes so very interesting, provided he
possesses some imagination. Everything is grist for his mill.
Moreover, despite the wholesale transformation in the scientific and
industrial aspects of war, there has been no revolution in the one
thing that counts most. Ardant du Picq's words, "The heart of man does
not change," are as good now as when he said them in an earlier period
of war. Whatever one learns for certain about the nature of man as a
fighting animal can be filed for ready reference; the hour will come
when it will be useful.

We have emphasized the value of becoming curious, and of asking
questions about what one doesn't know, and have said that even when
the questions are a little on the dumb side, it does no harm. But the
ice gets very thin at one point. The same question asked over and
again, like the same error made more than once, will grate the nerves
of any superior. It is the mark of inattention, and the beginning of
that "tissue of things neglected and things done amiss" which put
Stevenson's oddball character in the ditch. When an officer lets words
go in one ear and out the other like water off a duck's back, to quote
the Dutch janitor, he is chasing rainbows by rubbing fur in the wrong
direction.

Ideally, an officer should be able to do the work of any man serving
under him. There are even some command situations in which the ideal
becomes altogether attainable, and a wholly practicable objective. For
it may be said without qualification, that if he not only has this
capability, but demonstrates it, so that his men begin to understand
that he is thoroughl