PREFACE
This course of lessons has for its sole object a demonstration to the military man that rhetoric is a big part of his profession. If he sees this advantage early it is hoped that he will not slight his rich language as so many of us have done to our later regret. Vocational training in English! That is practically what this book is. It is recognizing rhetoric for the first time as a separate study in the field service regulations. Just as we take up topography, engineering, sanitation, and supply as sciences by themselves in order to fit our efficiency into the team work of battle later, so here we apply ourselves to that part of field work which helps us state our ideas in a proper military manner.
The course is in no way tactics, but it forms an excellent primer to tactics. It leads up to and aids in the solution of tactical problems by passing over military ground. Because it is a combination of analysis and synthesis, rhetoric, as we know, is, unlike the exact sciences, purely a secondary subject. Its material, whether of poetry, essay, or fiction, is indiscriminate in its selection of matter so long as the matter is good. The idea in this book is to make both the material and the treatment count—to place the emphasis upon the manner of expressing oneself and to let the student see incidentally the interesting military features as he is passing along. He will be learning what he has never before had the opportunity of taking up separately, and what will lead him more easily into intricate tactical paths afterwards.
Some will criticise the book in that the author is not conforming to the principles which he is enunciating. They will say, “He tells us to boil our communications to the clearest minimum while he himself deals in reiteration and illumination.” Although this objection appears just, it is nevertheless cursory. A closer view will reveal the fact that thepurposeandreadersof communications are quite different from thepurposeandreadersof a text book. One of the first principles we learn in rhetoric is to suit our treatment and diction to ourpurposeandreaders. Commanders await with interest and expectancy the words of a field message or order. Students await with skepticism or inertia the chapters of their lessons. Although we rightly can prescribe the severest clearness for something which is bound to be absorbed, we cannot be satisfied with one precise, colorless statement of that which is likely to be ignored. The student must be cudgeled and enticed. As a proof of the correctness of this position, this course has been tried with unexpected success upon the Cadets of the United States Military Academy. The very items which have been repeated and highly colored have proven themselves to the instructors to be the very ones which have more easily driven the points home.
Grateful acknowledgment is made by the author to Lieut. Colonel L. H. Holt, Professor of English and History, who made the book possible; to Captain G. Hoisington, Infantry, for drawing a plate; to Captains J. R. N. Weaver, Infantry, R. H. Lee, Coast Artillery Corps, L. E. Moreton, Coast Artillery Corps, C. C. Benson, Cavalry, and J. H. Grant, 24th Infantry, for their valuable criticism; and to Major A. W. Chilton, Infantry, for the revision of the book in order to make it conform to the practical work passed over—by his disinterested correction the whole becomes more valuable as a text.
W. A. G.