ittle judgment and even little memory," which isn't far wrong.
Consequently, competent lecturing entails the employment of every
technique which can be used to hammer a point home. In this way, a
truth or a lesson has a better chance of adhering because it is
identified with some definite image. Simply to illuminate this point,
it is noted that the jests which best stick in the memory are those
which are associated with some incongruous situation. To relate a
pertinent anecdote, to provide an apt quotation from some well-known
authority and to draw upon our own rich battle history for
illustrative materials are but a few of the means of freshening any
discussion and sharpening its purpose. Men are always ready to listen
to the story of other men's experience provided that it is told with
vigor. And insofar as combat is concerned, such teaching is in point,
for what has happened once will happen again.

For his way as an instructor of young infantry officers of the A. E.
F. in 1918, Lt. Col. H. M. Hutchinson of the British Army was awarded
our D. S. M. Officers who sat at his feet at Gondrecourt were unlikely
ever to forget the point of such an anecdote as:

"There will be no 'Stack arms' in my army. It is a thing one sees on a
brewer's calendar--The Soldier's Dream--showing a brave private
sleeping under a stack of rifles which it will take him a good
half-hour to untangle when the call comes to stand to. No, a soldier
had better carry the rifle with him to his meals, have it beside him
always, lavish his care upon it, and in short treat it more like a
wife than a weapon.

"I am reminded of the times in South Africa when we would come to a
country inn where a chap could stop for beer. Well, a soldier would
walk into the place, and immediately he would stand his rifle in a
corner--like an umbrella, you know--'We've arrived!'--and he'd get
well into his beer and a song, say, and suddenly firing would break
out on the inn from four sides.

"It seemed that a Boer had slipped into the entry and picked up all
the rifles and passed them around to his mates in the bushes,
and--well--there you are!"

As a cadet and later as an instructor at Sandhurst, Colonel Hutchinson
well knew the usefulness of the anecdote in catching and holding the
attention of the young. Who could forget the lesson in this, related
at Gondrecourt:

"In my youth I was a dashing ignoramus with clearer ideas than I now
have on the line of demarcation