ivate soldier lives. It is a circular from some one
at Lydd, some one who evidently cannot even write English, but who is
nevertheless begging for an iron hut in which to inflict lessons on our
soldiers. "At present," says this circular, "it is pretty to see in the
Home a group of Gunners busily occupied in wool-work or learning
basket-making, whilst one of their number sings or recites, and others
are playing games or letter-writing, but even quite recently the members
of the Bible Reading Union and one of the ladies might have been seen
painfully crowded behind screens, choosing the 'Golden Text' with
lowered voices, and trying to pray 'without distraction,' whilst at the
other end of the room men were having supper, and halfway down a dozen
Irish militia (who don't care to read, but are keen on a story) were
gathered round another lady, who was telling them an amusing temperance
tale, trying to speak so that the Bible readers should not hear her and
yet that the Leinsters _should_ was a difficulty, but when the Irishmen
begged for a song--difficulty became _impossibility_, and their friend
had to say, '_No._' Yet this is just the double work required in
Soldiers' Homes, and above all at Lydd, where there is so little safe
amusement to be had in camp, and none in the village." These poor
youngsters go from this "safe amusement" under the loving care of "lady
workers," this life of limitation, make-believe and spiritual servitude
that a self-respecting negro would find intolerable, into a warfare that
exacts initiative and a freely acting intelligence from all who take
part in it, under the bitterest penalties of shame and death. What can
you expect of them? And how can you expect any men of capacity and
energy, any men even of mediocre self-respect to knowingly place
themselves under the tutelage of the sort of people who dominate these
organized degradations? I am amazed the army gets so many capable
recruits as it does. And while the private lives under these conditions,
the would-be capable officer stifles amidst equally impossible
surroundings. He must associate with the uneducated products of the
public schools, and listen to their chatter about the "sports" that
delight them, suffer social indignities from the "army woman," worry and
waste money on needless clothes, and expect to end by being shamed or
killed under some unfairly promoted incapable. Nothing illustrates the
intellectual blankness of the British army