Napoleon is an example of attention. The application of this for your purpose is simple. You will a thing because you attend to it, and you attend to it because it interests you. Your interest depends upon an impulse for action—a desire to express yourself in ways that meet your self-approval. At the base of interest is a feeling that certain lines of conduct are worth while and should be made the field of your activities. It resolves itself into a love of, and a desire to make, certain types personal ideals.

Behind interest in any form of activity there may be intelligence or a desire to show off, sometimes a little of each. We have all seen a child jump from a lower step after prefacing the action by an invitation to "See what I can do." I knew a boy who could hold a lighted match in his mouth and let its rays shine through his teeth. To his mind it was quite an effective stunt, especially at night. He called it playing Jack lantern and was never tired of showing off.

In the Southern camps and in Cuba the parades and guard-mounts of the Eighth Massachusetts Infantry were usually attended by admiring spectators. We perfected ourselves in all the stunts laid down in the Drill Regulations and were never too tired to show off when the crowd collected; just because we could do them well we liked to perform, yet there was always an intelligent apprecia

tion that we were going through a routine which in some way was binding us together and creating a more efficient soldier mass.

In training men, do not let pass an opportunity of letting them go through their paces, if it appeals to their pride and they are doing good work.

General Wood travels to Plattsburg to inspect rookies after they have been at it for a week. He stirs their imagination by judicious commendations. The bank clerks, college professors, and business men enjoy doing the manual and marching before him. Their satisfaction is no less intense than that of the little child who jumps from the lower step. This pleasure is heightened by the idea that they are preparing to do a man's part in defending home and country. They feel that their special brand of soldiering is worth doing for a noble cause. The spirit is good, and every one participating echoes the invitation of youth, "Come on in! The water's fine."

The European war has powerfully stirred us by upsetting many notions about the immunity of America from aggression. The more we learn of happenings in other parts of the world, the more attention we can and do give to military matters. We question our preparedness for war or peace. At heart we desire efficiency and to express ourself worthily as a nation. Desire and intellect call for action. National interest is aroused. We see

the story of the individual reproduced upon a large scale. The means of stirring interest is the same.

When you become officers, create interest in the men you lead by enlarging their knowledge of and experience in the game, make your exercises evident steps in progress, and connect them in the soldier's mind with ideas of increased efficiency, which can help him and his organization to serve the cause, and above all keep before him the cause as something holy and righteous, worthy of his service.

V

Ο

THE STRUGGLE

UR third phase of character building is the struggle to attain standards. At this stage of a soldier's training he is involved in struggles to acquire military habits and experience as well as to attain ideals. The three struggles are contemporaneous, react upon each other, and are all processes in character building. It is convenient to discuss the three kinds of struggles in the same chapter.

What we wish to accomplish by our struggles are changes and re-arrangements in our bodies. I will explain what I mean by examples. Everyone believes a soldier should know how to shoot. Training him to this involves imparting knowledge of how it should be done and practice in doing it, until the nerves and muscles make the proper adjustments without conscious attention. We make the same kind of struggle to adjust nerves and muscles when we learn to walk, play a piano, or work a typewriter. If the recruit is intended for the cavalry he must learn to

ride. This means practice, until the movements necessary to keep the rider in place become automatic, and take place without conscious effort. The training of nerves and muscles to work for us without attention we call acquiring habits. Like manual training much of military education consists in acquiring useful habits. The struggle in this kind of work is keeping men at training until the movements necessary to attain the standards take place automatically and without conscious attention.

Let us follow our cavalry recruit. He must learn how to care for his horse, scout and patrol with his comrades. Here a new element enters into his education, that of solving problems. Each situation will probably have in it a new feature, but the problems must be solved by some reference to past experience. The light of the past is the only guide to the future. To use an old experience we must have the memory of it in shape to be called up and made available. The solution of many kindred problems does create in the mind a power of rapid revision of past problems and a classification of new problems with reference to former solutions. The actor may not consciously analyze what goes on. He may only know that a decision comes. I call this power organized experience. We see it in all games of sport and in most professions. As experience multiplies, there