THE NEW DISCIPLINE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LI, Issue 15563, 21 March 1914, Page 6

THE NEW DISCIPLINE.

" If I had not met Australians and stood shoulder to shoulder with them in war time, I should have found it more difficult to come hero and make speeches to yon about your own forces, and your own men —whom you know a great deal better than, I do, and to try and criticise your whole box of tricks," said General Sir lan Hamilton at a dinner in Sydney. " In war there is a great fusing power, and when you do fight alongside men you get to know them fairly quickly." General Hamilton added that what he thought of the Australians as he saw them in South rica, would be found in Che history of the Royal War Commission. "If we were ever drawn up in battle array and ready to fight, and the Boers cleared out," he ! said, " believe me, the Australians almost shed tears of bitter disappointment. Willingness to fight ?s half the battle," he continued, "but a battle takes place at the niost once in 30 days. The rest of the time is spent in marching' and manoeuvring for the best position, and depending partly, no doubt, on the willingness to fight, but also on the habit of discipline and the habit of cohesion. After what I have said about the keen fighting temperament of Australians," he added, "you will not be too angry with me if I say that the strong points of some of the contingents when they first landed in South Africa were not cohesion and discipline." He would not go into a dissertation on discipline and- compare the old and new, but while the old meant fear of the officers—according to Gibbon the Roman soldier feared his officers more tnan the enemy— new type meant that the men should be inspired to respect their officers by seeing that any tim there was work to be done the officer was, the.better man.