Nothing could have been less like
an 'irregular' force than the fleet with which La Galissonniere
beat Byng off Minorca, or the French fleets which, in the war
of American Independence, so often disappointed the hopes of
the British. The records of war on land and by sea--especially
the extracts from them included in the enumeration already
given--lend no support to the silly suggestion that efficient
defence can be provided for a country by 'an untrained man with
a rifle behind a hedge.' The truth is that it was not the absence
of organisation or training on one side which enabled it to defeat
the other. If the beaten side had been elaborately organised and
carefully trained, there must have been something bad in its
organisation or its methods.
Now this 'something bad,' this defect--wherever it has disclosed
itself--has been enough to neutralise the most splendid courage
and the most unselfish devotion. It has been seen that armies
and navies the valour of which has never been questioned have
been defeated by antagonists sometimes as highly organised as
they were, and sometimes much less so. This ought to put us on
the track of the cause which has produced an effect so little
anticipated. A 'regular' permanently embodied or maintained service
of fighting men is always likely to develop a spirit of intense
professional self-satisfaction. The more highly organised it is,
and the more sharply its official frontiers are defined, the
more intense is this spirit likely to become.
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