The nature of the work which the conscript has to perform on manoeuvres is purely a matter of luck. For instance, the force in which one is serving may be compelled, in order to carry out the scheme of its commander, to execute a wheeling or turning movement to either flank, and, supposing a wheel to the right flank is required, then the men on the right flank have very little marching to do, and very little work, since their part in the scheme is to wait for the wheeling flank to come round. An amusing old scamp whose service began when the five years' law was still in force, and who served in a French infantry battalion up to a short time ago, used to allege that he was once right-hand man of an army corps which wheeled in this fashion with the right flank for a pivot. "I stood for three weeks," he alleged, "on that flank, waiting for the outer flank to come round, and looking up the line to see that the men kept their dressing." The "dressing," it should be explained, is a term used in both the French and British Army for the keeping of line by the men.
But, speaking seriously, these wheeling movements occur frequently during a term of manoeuvres; when the business is over, and the men of the various units come to compare notes, they are often puzzled at the enormous amount of work and marching imposed on one unit, while another had practically nothing to do, and stayed very nearly in the same place throughout the whole time. For, though the part that his own regiment has to play in a scheme is usually explained to the conscript, the strategical nature of the scheme as a whole is generally beyond his comprehension. This is not to be wondered at, since a strategical scheme is planned out by the best brains of the army corps--at least, the staff officers are supposed to possess the best brains, and are given their posts mainly on account of greater fitness for the planning of military operations.
Manoeuvres as a whole approximate as nearly as is possible, in view of the difference in circumstances, to active service, but "nearly as possible" is not "quite," and the lessons learned on manoeuvres, valuable though they are, cannot be unreservedly applied to active service. Reference has already been made to the way in which the soldier enjoys his period of manoeuvres, but no man enjoys active service in a similar fashion, and _moral_, one of the greatest deciding factors in war, is entirely absent from the mimic warfare in which armies engage in time of peace. At the same time the lessons learned from manoeuvres are as valuable as they are varied. Commanding officers learn the amount of strain which they can impose on their men; the conditions under which transport can and must be brought up for the use of the troops can be studied with almost as much accuracy as in warfare; the cavalry commander learns the value, from a war point of view, of his men as scouts and on detached duties, while the artillery officer finds out, as he never could without manoeuvre experience, the possibilities of gun transport, and the business of ranging positions with a view to rendering them untenable by shellfire. Where the manoeuvre period fails as regards war lies mainly in the absence of disadvantages. As already remarked, the conditions under which transport can be brought up for the use of troops can be studied, but sometimes in war transport goes wrong, or gets captured, and an army has to do its best to keep the field until supplementary supplies can be obtained; manoeuvres never impose this form of disability on the troops. The cavalry commander is unable to ascertain what his men would do when actually under fire, and though artillery officers learn to range a position, they are unable to judge what the troops occupying that position will be like after shelling has been carried out. Manoeuvres teach up to a point, but from that point the art of war can be learned only from the grim business itself, and, since no two bodies of troops are ever in the same frame of mind, and no two battles are fought under identical conditions, the art of war is never learned, simple though its principles are.