ock of suitable gentlemen, uncommonly
large as it is, has been overdrawn; that those who have latterly gone
into service, or stayed in, have perforce divested themselves of their
gentility in some appreciable measure, particularly as regards class
distinction, and have fallen on their feet in the more commonplace role
of common men.

Serviceability in this modern warfare is conditioned on much the same
traits of temperament and training that make for usefulness in the
modern industrial processes, where large-scale coordinations of movement
and an effective familiarity with precise and far-reaching mechanical
processes is an indispensable requirement,--indispensable in the same
measure as the efficient conduct of this modern machine industry is
indispensable. But the British gentleman, in so far as he runs true to
type, is of no use to modern industry; quite the contrary, in fact.
Still, the British gentleman is, in point of heredity, the same thing
over again as the British common man; so that, barring the misdirected
training that makes him a gentleman, and which can largely be undone
under urgent need and pressure, he can be made serviceable for such uses
as the modern warfare requires. Meantime the very large demand for
officers, and the insatiable demand for capable officers, has brought
the experienced and capable common man into the case and is in a fair
way to discredit gentility as a necessary qualification of field
officers.

But the same process of discredit and elimination is also extending to
the responsible officials who have the administration of things in hand.
Indeed, the course of vulgarisation among the responsible officials has
now been under way for some appreciable time and with very perceptible
effect, and the rate of displacement appears to be gathering velocity
with every month that passes. Here, as in the field operations, it also
appears that gentlemanly methods, standards, preconceptions, and
knowledge of men and things, is no longer to the purpose. Here, too, it
is increasingly evident that this is not a gentlemen's war. And the
traditional qualifications that have sufficed in the past, at least to
the extent of enabling the British management to "muddle through," as
they are proudly in the habit of saying,--these qualifications are of
slight account in this technological conjuncture of the nation's
fortunes. It would perhaps be an under-statement to say that these
gentlemanly qualification