the War Office for not having recognized the
principle of advancement in the higher grades of the army by merit
sooner, having failed to notice that the Army Order concerned the
question of promotion to the rank of full general. Of their own
accord, and quite gratuitously, they exposed their ignorance of the
fact that promotions to the ranks of brigadier-general, major-general
and lieutenant-general had been effected by selection for several
years previously; and they also exposed their ignorance of the fact
that, up till the time of the Great War, there had never been any
special importance attached to the rank of full general. In the South
African War, when we had a far larger military force on active service
than ever previously in our history, only three general officers of
higher rank than lieutenant-general were employed--Lord Roberts, Sir
R. Buller, and Lord Kitchener--and, although all three were in the
field together, Lord Roberts was a field-marshal; when, later, Lord
Kitchener was in supreme command he had no full general under him.

The Great War produced an entirely new condition of things, because we
then came to have operating in the field, not merely one army but
several armies, each consisting of several army corps, and each of
those army corps commanded by a lieutenant-general. It was therefore
convenient that the armies should be commanded by full generals, and
the rank of full general suddenly assumed a real instead of merely a
nominal importance. It thus became necessary to effect promotion to
full general by selection instead of by seniority. Nobody expects
editors to know details of this kind; but it surely is their duty to
investigate before starting on a crusade. In the case of people who
knew the facts, this particular blunder merely made the newspapers
that committed it look ridiculous; but the majority of those who read
the drivel in all probability had no idea of the facts, and were led
to imagine that promotions to the various ranks of general officer had
hitherto all been a matter of seniority. It is an example of the way
in which the public have been misled about the War Office by the Press
for years past.

A year or so after the Armistice, one of the London evening papers,
when criticizing the disinclination of the War Office to adopt new
ideas in respect to devices for use in the field (a fair enough
subject of discussion in itself), gave itself away by complaining that
"tanks were no