Note 1 — Chapter IV · PRELIMINARIES OF A CAMPAIGN

The details of the operation of mobilization are kept secret, but the elementary principles have everywhere been copied from the Prussian system and may be explained in an imaginary example. Suppose a company to have a peace strength of 120 men and to pass each year forty men into the reserve, receiving instead the same number of recruits, the war strength being 240. The public announcement of the decree for mobilization makes it the duty of each of the 120 reservists to proceed directly to the headquarters of the company, where they will arrive, according to the distance from their homes, say on the first, second, or third day of mobilization. The captain has a nominal list of the whole company, and keeps in store under his own responsibility the complete new war kit for each of the 240 men. As they arrive the men pass the doctor, receive their kits, and are told off to their posts in the completed company. According to the care with which the rules have been framed (this is the staff's principal share in the work) so as to divide the labour, occupying every man from the general to the bugler and giving to each that work which he can best do, and to none more than he can do in the time allowed, will be the rapidity, ease, and certainty with which the whole mobilization will be effected.