10 AUGUST 1918, Page 14

THE ESPRIT OF THE DIVISION.

[To ma Enrron or ma Sezersroa."3

SIE,—I feel that it may be well worth while pointing out a feet which your readers, and particularly your numerous soldier readers, are conscious of, but yet of which they have probably not grasped the full significance. Before this war the old centre of esprit de corps was the regiment. Of course to a very large extent this is till the case, but yet the conditions of modern military organization are such that officers and men have transferred their deeper loyalty and affection to the men immediately around them —viz., the men of their division. Whenever one is in England the divisional mark is always an introduction, and the first ques- tion tilt rises naturally, to the lips is "Where's the old division ? How is it going on ? " In France it is the divisional sign that one is always -seeing and looking out for as part of one's duty, but besides all this, it has become the social uniting force, as well as administrative. Under the conditions existing in the field to-day it is obvious that officers and men of the same regiment can have but little opportunity of knowing anything of each other. Accordingly after the war there is no doubt that the commemoration of great battles will be divisional and not

regi- mental. If this is a fact, we are surely not unwise to begin to accommodate ourselves to a new r4ginie, which is important because of its future significance.—I am, Sir, &e., G. D'AROY-BLAORMAN, C.F.