ps like our own. The late
Lord Goschen used to tell a story of a letter that he had from a Captain
in the navy at the time when he was First Lord. This Captain's ship was
lying alongside a foreign cruiser in some port, and he compared in his
report the powers of the two vessels. Lord Goschen said that his heart
sank as he read the long catalogue of points in which the British ship
was inferior--guns, armor, speed--until he came to the postscript, which
was: "I think I could take her in twenty minutes."

With all the grumbling of our old soldiers, there is always some
reservation of the sort at the end of it. Of course, those who are
familiar with our ways of getting things done would understand that a
good deal of the croaking is a means of getting our little army
increased, or at least preventing its being diminished. But whatever the
cause, the result has been the impression abroad of a "contemptible
little army." Whatever surprise in the shape of 17-inch howitzers or
900-foot Zeppelins the Kaiser may have for us, it is a safe prophecy
that it will be a small matter compared to that which Sir John French
and his men will be to him.

But above all I look forward to the development of our mounted riflemen.
This I say in no disparagement of our cavalry, who have done so
magnificently. But the mounted rifleman is a peculiarly British
product--British and American--with a fresh edge upon it from South
Africa. I am most curious to see what a division of these fellows will
make of the Uhlans. It is good to see that already the old banners are
in the wind, Lovat's Horse, Scottish Horse, King Edward's Horse, and the
rest. All that cavalry can do will surely be done by our cavalry. But I
have always held, and I still very strongly hold, that the mounted
rifleman has it in him to alter our whole conception of warfare, as the
mounted archer did in his day; and now in this very war will be his
first great chance upon a large scale. Ten thousand well-mounted,
well-trained riflemen, young officers to lead them, all broad Germany,
with its towns, its railways and its magazines before them--there lies
one more surprise for the doctrinaires of Berlin.

*The Need of Being Merciless*

*By Maurice Maeterlinck.*

*From The London Daily Mail.*

At these moments of tragedy none should be allowed to speak who cannot
shoulder a rifle, for the written word seems so monstrously useless and
so overwhelmingly trivial in face of this