[11] Even when the hostile artillery was still capable of fire these masses were used, for in no other formation could the heterogeneous and ill-trained infantry of Napoleon’s vassal states (which constituted half of his army) be brought up at all.
[12] Rifles had, of course, been used by corps of light troops (both infantry and mounted) for many years. The British Rifle Brigade was formed in 1800, but even in the Seven Years’ War there were rifle-corps or companies in the armies of Prussia and Austria. These older rifles could not compare in rapidity or volume of fire with the ordinary firelock.
[13] The Prussian company was about 250 strong (see below under “Organization”). This strength was adopted after 1870 by practically all nations which adopted universal service. The battalion had 4 companies.
[14] The 1902 edition of Infantry Training indeed treated the new scouts as a thin advanced firing line, but in 1907, at which date important modifications began to be made in the “doctrine” of the British Army, the scouts were expressly restricted to the old-fashioned “skirmishing” duties.
[15] This is no new thing, but belongs, irrespective of armament, to the “War of masses.” The king of Prussia’s fighting instructions of the 10th of August 1813 lay down the principle as clearly as any modern work.
[16] In the British Service, men whose nerves betray them on the shooting range are ordered more gymnastics (Musketry Regulations, 1910).
[17] In 1870 the “preconceived idea” was practically confined to strategy, and the tactical improvisations of the Germans themselves deranged the execution of the plan quite as often as the act of the enemy. Of late years, therefore, the “preconceived idea” has been imposed on tactics also in that country. Special care and study is given to the once despised “early deployments” in cases where a fight is part of the “idea,” and to the difficult problem of breaking off the action, when it takes a form that is incompatible with the development of the main scheme.
[18] In February 1910 a new Infantry Training was said to be in preparation. The I.T. of 1905 is in some degree incompatible with the later and ruling doctrine of the F.S. Regulations, and in the winter of 1909 the Army Council issued a memorandum drawing attention to the different conceptions of the decisive attack as embodied in the latter and as revealed in manœuvre procedure.
INFANT SCHOOLS. The provision in modern times of systematized training for children below the age when elementary education normally begins may be dated from the village school at Waldbach founded by Jean Frédéric Oberlin in 1774. Robert Owen started an infant school at New Lanark in 1800, and great interest in the question was taken in Great Britain during the early years of the 19th century, leading to the foundation in 1836 of the Home and Colonial School Society for the training of teachers in infant schools; this in turn reacted upon other countries, especially Germany. Further impetus and a new direction were given to the movement by Friedrich W. A. Froebel, and the methods of training adopted for children between the ages of three and six have in most countries been influenced by, if not based on, that system of directed activities which was the foundation of the type of “play-school” called by him the Kinder Garten, or “children’s garden.” The growing tendency in England to lay stress on the mental training of very young children, and to use the “infant school” as preparatory to the elementary school, has led to a considerable reaction; medical officers of health have pointed out the dangers of infection to which children up to the age of five are specially liable when congregated together—also the physical effects of badly ventilated class-rooms, and there is a consensus of opinion that formal mental teaching is directly injurious before the age of six or even seven years. At the same time the increase in the industrial employment of married women, with the consequent difficulty of proper care of young children by the mother in the home, has somewhat shifted the ground from a purely educational to a social and physical aspect. While it is agreed that the ideal place for a young child is the home under the supervision of its mother, the present industrial conditions often compel a mother to go out to work, and leave her children either shut up alone, or free to play about the streets, or in the care of a neighbour or professional “minder.” In each case the children must suffer. The provision by a public authority of opportunities for suitable training for such children seems therefore a necessity. The moral advantages gained by freeing the child from the streets, by the superintendence of a trained teacher over the games, by the early inculcation of habits of discipline and obedience; the physical advantages of cleanliness and tidiness, and the opportunity of disclosing incipient diseases and weaknesses, outweigh the disadvantages which the opponents of infant training adduce. It remains to give a brief account of what is done in Great Britain, the United States of America, and certain other countries. A valuable report was issued for the English Board of Education by a Consultative Committee upon the school attendance of children below the age of five (vol. 22 of the Special Reports, 1909), which also gives some account of the provision of day nurseries or crèches for babies.