The Military Manceuvres came to an end on Friday week
in a march past Lord Roberts at Newbury. Taken as a whole, they must be pronounced to have been a great success, and no one who marched with the troops or saw them at first hand can doubt that the nation has a right to be proud of its Army. Not only was the behaviour of the forty thousand men who were concentrated in the North of Wiltshire and South of Berkshire excellent as regards the civil population, but their military work was performed with alertness and intelligence. The marching showed that the physique of the troops was sound, and that there was no slackness, while the management of the large number of horses by the Cavalry, Yeomanry, Mounted Infantry, Artillery, and Transport left very little to be desired. The contrast with previous Manceuvres was most marked, and, owing to the fact that almost all the officers and half the men were veteran campaigners, there was an air of reality about the proceedings which made them most impressive. Strange as it may seem, there was far less, not more, inclina- tion among the men who had seen "the real thing" to talk about "playing at soldiers," and the interest in the military problems varied directly with the war experience of the participants in Lord Roberts's mimic campaign.
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