d with no welcome
glances of kindly approval, no waving of handkerchiefs, no clapping of
hands. Nursemaids, who are said to have a nice and discriminating eye
for soldiery, gazed in amused and contemptuous silence as we passed.
Children looked at us in wide-eyed wonder. Only the dumb beasts were
demonstrative, and they in a manner which was not at all to our liking.
Dogs barked, and sedate old family horses, which would stand placidly at
the curbing while fire engines thundered past with bells clanging and
sirens shrieking, pricked up their ears at our approach, and, after one
startled glance, galloped madly away and disappeared in clouds of dust
far in the distance.

We knew why the nursemaids were cool, and why family horses developed
hysteria with such startling suddenness. But in our pride we did not see
that which we did not wish to see. Therefore we marched, or, to be more
truthful, shambled on, shouting lusty choruses with an air of boisterous
gayety which was anything but genuine.

"You do as I do and you'll do right,
Fall in and follow me!"

was a favorite with number 12 platoon. Their enthusiasm might have carried
conviction had it not been for their personal appearance, which certainly
did not. Number 15 platoon would strive manfully for a hearing with

"Steadily, shoulder to shoulder,
Steadily, blade by blade;
Marching along,
Sturdy and strong,
Like the boys of the old brigade."

As a strictly accurate historian I must confess that none of these
assertions were quite true. We marched neither steadily, nor shoulder to
shoulder, nor blade by blade. We straggled all over the road, and kept
step only when the sergeant major doubled forward, warning us, with
threats of extra drills, to keep in our fours or to "pick it up!" In
fact, "the boys of the old brigade," whoever they may have been, would
have scornfully repudiated the suggestion that we resembled them in any
respect.

They would have been justified in doing so had any of them seen us at the
end of six weeks of training. For, however reluctantly, we were forced to
admit that Sergeant Harris was right when he called us "a raw batch o'
rookies." Unpromising we were not. There was good stuff in the ranks, the
material from which real soldiers are made, and were made; but it had not
yet been rounded into shape. We were still nothing more than a
homogeneous assembly of individuals.

We declined to accept the responsibility