We cannot escape them if we would. We ourselves use them. But do we use
them with precise and masterly understanding? You call one civilian
colonel and another major; which have you paid the higher compliment? You
are uncertain whether a given officer is a colonel or a major, and you
wish to address him in such fashion as will least offend his sensitiveness
as to rank and nomenclature; which title--colonel or major--is the less
perilous? You are told that a major has command of a battalion; does that
tell you anything about him? You are told that he has command of a
squadron, of a brigade, of a platoon; do these changes in circumstances
have any import for you? If not, you have too faltering a grasp upon
military facts and terminology.
The best remedy for such shortcomings is to be insatiably curious on all
subjects. This of course is the ideal; nobody ever fully attains it.
Nevertheless Exercise M will set you to groping into certain broad matters
relevant to ordinary needs. Thereafter, if your purpose be strong enough,
you will carry the same methods there acquired into other fields of
knowledge.
You may object that all this is as much mental as linguistic--that what is
proposed will result in as large accessions of general information as of
vocabulary.
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