When the first field telephones reached front-line units, commanders expected them to speed up decisions. In practice the effect was more complicated. Orders now travelled faster than the information needed to judge them, and headquarters miles behind the line began directing movements it could not see. Junior officers who had once acted on their own judgment learned to wait for instructions. Some historians argue that the telephone did not so much improve command as move it further from the ground, and that the cost of that distance was paid by the units carrying out orders written for a situation that had already changed.
It can be inferred from the passage that before field telephones, junior officers
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Correct answer to question 4 (Paragraph Comprehension): made more decisions on their own initiative
Method
The passage says junior officers who had once acted on their own judgment learned to wait for instructions. If they learned to wait, they previously did not, so they must have decided more for themselves. The passage says nothing about training or promotion.
Updated: November 2026
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