.C. as, being a stranger, I would not
know the way. So a crock was procured, saddlery was fished out of its
case and polished up in frantic haste, and in due course we jogged out
to the venue. On arriving in the park we found the garrison,
reinforced by a substantial Naval Brigade which had been extracted
from H.M. ships in harbour, drawn up and looking very imposing, while
people from round about had gathered in swarms and their best clothes
to witness the spectacle. As we rode on to the ground the
Assistant-Adjutant-General came cantering up. "The parade's all ready
for you, sir," he reported, "and everything's all correct--except the
Assistant-Quartermaster-General. He, sir, is _in rags_." He was.

There was one broad principle, the truth of which was brought out very
clearly during the course of our British campaigns between 1914 and
1919--the principle that commanders of brigades and divisions require
to be young and active men. There were exceptions, no doubt; but the
exceptions only proved what came to be a generally accepted rule. The
old methods of promotion in the Army, methods which hinged partly on
the purchase system and partly on the prizes of the service going by
interest and by favour, were highly objectionable; but those methods
did have the advantage that commanders in the field, whether they
turned out to be efficient or to be inefficient, were at least fairly
young in years as a rule. Wellington himself, and all his principal
subordinates other than Graham and Picton, were well under fifty years
of age at the end of the Peninsular War; Wellington was forty-five,
Beresford was forty-six, Hill was forty-two, Lowry Cole was forty-two.
Wolfe, again, and Clive, Amherst and Granby, the most distinguished
British commanders of the eighteenth century except Marlborough, were
all comparatively young men at the time when they made their mark. It
was only in the course of the long peace that followed Waterloo that
our general-officers as a body came to be well on in life--Lord Raglan
at the beginning of the Crimean War was sixty-six, Brown was
sixty-four, Cathcart was sixty--even if at a somewhat later date a
prolonged course of small wars did produce a sufficiency of young
commanders to go round for minor campaigns. It would seem advisable to
reduce the limit of age for promotion to the grade of major-general
from fifty-seven to fifty, and that for the grade of lieutenant-general
from sixty-two to fifty-seven.