(4) The effect, method, and proportionate value of rifle fire and of the bayonet.
(5) The use of field artillery; and particularly whether, after a certain degree of rapidity, still greater rapidity of fire was worth having.
(6) The exact rôle that would be played in modern war by the supply of certain materials hitherto unimportant and discoverable only in certain limited regions, most of them out of Europe. There are a great number of these materials, but much the most important is petrol.
(7) Lastly, and by far the most vital of purely technical questions to this country, was the solution of certain opposing theories upon what is rather rhetorically called “the command of the sea” and what might more justly be called naval superiority.
In the second set, the political questions, the most important were:
(1) The working of the conscript and of the voluntary systems.
(2) The possibility of preserving secrecy.
(3) Whether mobilization would work smoothly or not in the face of class struggles supposedly formidable to national interests.
(4) The action of our modern town populations under the moral strain of war.