30 APRIL 1937, Page 25

" OUR MILITARY BRASS-HATS " [To the Editor of THE

SPECTATOR.] SIR, I do not wish to begin a controversy with Major- General Alexander on the relative amount of time and attention given by British, French, and German staff officers, in the years immediately before 1914, to the scientific study of war, but I may be allowed to point out that the sentences of mine about which General Alexander complains had nothing to do with the British Expeditionary Force which left this country in 1914. Rudyard Kipling's poem was written during the Boer War, and if General Alexander will look again at my comments on the poem, he will see that my words refer to the high command and staff of the British army in the period before the Boer War.