There, across the North Sea, not in the armies only, but in ...

There, across the North Sea, not in the armies only, but in the factories, schools, and universities of Germany, Late Victorian England instinctively apprehended its rival or its successor. Germany was abreast of the time, England was failing behind.

Thus, before Rosebery had put the word into circulation, the conception of efficiency as the Germans understood and practised it; of technical, professional competence in every sphere of life; was gaining ground, to overshadow and, in the end, dislodge, the old faith in experience, in practical, instinctive capacity.

The

Later Victorian was not so sure as

his father that a stout heart and a cool head would do more to make a soldier than all the diagrams of Jomini.

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