Troops, therefore, should be kept, at all times and
under all circumstances, under the same rigid discipline, and in the
full exercise of their functions, equally ready at all seasons for
action."
Lord Strathern took up the cudgels and maintained that though an army
might be called a machine, its component parts were men, who
necessarily had some perception of the contingencies and emergencies
incident to military life, and that great as were sacrifices they
might make, and the restrictions they might bear with when there was
obvious necessity for them, should the same exacting course be pursued
as a system, it would only break their spirits, freeze their zeal, and
disgust them with the service. "We have seen enough of your mechanical
armies, drilled and regulated to perfection, as soulless mechanism. We
have seen how, on the dislocation of this machine, the parts became
useless and helpless, without resource in themselves. In short, it is
the Prussian and Austrian system which has given half Europe to the
French. No; if the bow need unbending, still more does the soldier
need relaxation, to give vigor and elasticity to body and mind.
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