Officers' drill followed, with sword exercise
and pistol practice. The day closed with the inspection of the
regiments in turn at dress parade, and the evening was allotted to
schools of theoretic tactics, outpost duty, and the like. Besides
their copies of the regulation tactics, officers supplied themselves
with such manuals as Mahan's books on Field Fortifications and on
Outpost Duty. I adopted at the beginning a rule to have some
military work in course of reading, and kept it up even in the
field, sending home one volume and getting another by mail. In this
way I gradually went through all the leading books I could find both
in English and in French, including the whole of Jomini's works, his
histories as well as his "Napoleon" and his "Grandes Operations
Militaires." I know of no intellectual stimulus so valuable to the
soldier as the reading of military history narrated by an
acknowledged master in the art of war. To see what others have done
in important junctures, and to have both their merits and their
mistakes analyzed by a competent critic, rouses one's mind to
grapple with the problem before it, and begets a generous
determination to try to rival in one's own sphere of action the
brilliant deeds of soldiers who have made a name in other times.
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