THE HEW DISCIPLINE.

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume XLI, Issue 13350, 7 April 1914, Page 4

THE HEW DISCIPLINE.

"If I had not met Australians and stood shoul'der to shoulder with them, in war. time, I should have found it ' mure difficult to come here and nluke / speeches to" vou about your qwn forces, und your own men— whom you know^a great deal better than I do, and to try and criticise your, whple box of tricks, said General Sir lan 'Hamilton at a dinner iii Svdney. ."In war there is a great fusing power, and when you do hg<it alongside fnen you get to know thein fairly quickly/', General Hamilton added that 1 what ho thought of tho Australians as he saw them in South Africa, would be found in the history of -the Royal War Commission. "If. we were ever drawn np in battle array and ready to fight,, and the Boers cleared out, ho siiid, "believe me. the Australians almost shed tears of bitter disappointment.. Willingness to fight, is half the battle," :h»i continued, "but a, batye takes place at the most . onco . in 30 days. The rest of the Jiftio is spent iiT marching and manoeuvring, for tlie best position, and depending partly, no dqu.bt, oil the willingness to fight, but also on the habit of discipline and- the habit of cohesion. After' what I have said about tho keen fighting' temperament of Australians," bp added, "you wilL imt be too angry with me if 1 say that .the strong points of some of .the contingents* 1 when. they first landed in South .Africa were not cohesion and discipline." J?° would not go into a dissertation on discipline and compare the old and the new, but while the old meant fear of i tho officers — according: to , Gibbon the Roman soldier feared his officers more than the enemy— the new type meant that the ; men should be inspired to respect, their / officers by seeing that any time there was work to be done the officer was the better nw*.