and cheeriness, than a West
End one. And it is the same with soldiers. The officers are fine
fellows, but in this point they yield to the soldiers.

And it means a lot. Of what use is even courage itself if it goes with
impatience and a flash in the pan endurance? This quality of
cheerfulness is really the quality that outlasts all others. It means
not only that you have an army in good fighting trim to-day, but that
this time next year, or the year after, you will still have an army in
good fighting trim. In the long-run it wears down all opposition, but it
is not a characteristic you notice at first. Gradually it makes itself
felt, and gradually it governs your estimate of the whole army. And then
the peculiar wickedness of Tommy (a child's naughtiness for
superficiality) ceases to offend you so much. Rather your own regulation
code seems a trifle less important than it did. Let's all lie and steal;
what does it signify? I would lie and steal till the crack of doom to
gain the serene endurance of the British soldier.[1]

Of his courage one need scarcely speak. It is a subject on which a great
deal of rubbish has been talked. It is not true that all soldiers are
brave, nor is it true that even brave soldiers will go anywhere and do
anything. On the other hand, it certainly is true that our soldiers'
courage--that is, their apparent unconsciousness of danger--strikes one
as very remarkable. You need not believe more about the _light of
battle_ and the _warrior's lust_, and all that sort of thing, than you
want to. There is very little excitement in a modern battle, and the
English soldier is not an excitable man, but this only makes the display
of courage more striking. Nothing can be more terrible than one of our
_slow_ charges, a charge in which all the peril which used to be
compressed into a hundred yards' rush in hot blood is spread out over an
afternoon's walk. I am sure any man who has ever taken part in one of
those ghastly processions, and, at thirty yards interval, watched the
dust-spots, at first promiscuous, gradually concentrating round him, and
listened to the constant soft whine or nearer hiss of passing bullets,
and seen men fall and plodded on still, solitary, waiting his turn,
would look upon the maddest and bloodiest rush of old days as a positive
luxury by comparison.

What I think about our soldiers' courage is that it is of such a sort
that it takes very little out of them. One of the foreign off