field training of a large number of battalions and regiments of infantry and artillery, and to compare notes with brother officers of the other arms. In addition, several trips abroad and, incidental thereto, visits to battlefields, furnished valuable suggestions. I postponed issuing the new edition until the publication of the new Russian and Japanese Drill Regulations, which, with our own excellent regulations, best illustrate the lessons learned from the war in the Far East. For this fourth edition I was further able to draw upon the new French (1904), Italian (1905), Belgian (1906), U. S. (1904), British (1905), and Swiss (1908) Drill Regulations. This enumeration alone justifies the statement, "completely revised," appearing on the title page.
I have earnestly endeavored to make use of foreign experiences in detail. The words of Lieutenant-General Sir Ian Hamilton of the British Army, to whose writings I owe a great deal, deserve special attention in studying the drill regulations of foreign armies: "It is a blessing that the greater and prouder an army, the more immovably it is steeped in conservatism, so that as a whole it is finally incapable of assimilating the lessons gained by other armies. Military attachés may discover the most important points in the training and employment of foreign armies and urgently recommend their imitation, but their comrades will pay no more attention to them than did Napoleon III. to Stoffel's reports on the Prussian army before the outbreak of the Franco German war."
The treatment of the subject matter has remained the same throughout; it represents, as in the first edition, the principle that tactical lessons must be deduced from human nature, from the effect of weapons, and from experience in war, proper regard being had for national characteristics and historical transmission. Tactics is psychology. My statements in regard to fire effect are based, as before, upon the works of His Excellency, Lieutenant-General
