His memory for
detail was like a card-index system, yet his mind was not clogged with
detail, but saw the wood as well as the trees, and the whole broad
sweep of the problem which confronted him. There was something
fascinating as well as terrible in his exposition of a battle that he
was planning. For the first time in his presence and over his maps, I
saw that after all there was such a thing as the science of war, and
that it was not always a fetish of elementary ideas raised to the nth
degree of pomposity, as I had been led to believe by contact with
other generals and staff-officers. Here at least was a man who dealt
with it as a scientific business, according to the methods of science-
-calculating the weight and effect of gun-fire, the strength of the
enemy's defenses and man-power, the psychology of German generalship
and of German units, the pressure which could be put on British troops
before the breaking-point of courage, the relative or cumulative
effects of poison-gas, mines, heavy and light artillery, tanks, the
disposition of German guns and the probability of their movement in
this direction or that, the amount of their wastage under our counter-
battery work, the advantages of attacks in depth--one body of troops
"leap-frogging," another in an advance to further objectives--the
time-table of transport, the supply of food and water and ammunition,
the comfort of troops before action, and a thousand other factors of
success.
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