g to those who had known him only as Horace
Faggit, Esquire, the tried and trusted Representative of the fine old
British Firm of Schneider, Schnitzel, Schnorrer & Schmidt.

To Captain Malet-Marsac, an unusually thoughtful, observant and
studious soldier, it was deeply interesting to see how War affected
different people how values changed, how the Great became exceeding
small, and the insignificant person became important. By the end of the
first month of what was virtually the siege of the Military Prison,
Horace Faggit, late office-boy, clerk, and bagman, was worth
considerably more than Augustus Grobble, late Professor of Moral
Philosophy; Cornelius Gosling-Green, late Publicist; Edward Jones, late
(alleged) Educationist, of Duri formerly; and a late Head of a
Department,--all rolled into one--a keen, dapper, self-reliant soldier,
courageous, prompt, and very bloodthirsty.

As he strolled up and down, supervising drills, went round the
sentry-posts by night, or marched at the head of a patrol, Captain
Malet-Marsac would reflect upon the relativity of things, the false
values of civilization, and the extraordinary devitalising and
deteriorating results of "education". When it came to vital issues,
elementals, stark essential manhood,--then the elect of civilization,
the chosen of education, weighed, was found not only wanting but largely
negligible. Where the highly "educated" was as good as the other he was
so by reason of his games and sports, his _shikar_, or his specialized
training--as in the case of the engineers and other physically-trained
men.

Captain John Bruce, for example, Professor of Engineering, was a soldier
in a few weeks and a fine one. In time of peace, a quiet, humorous, dour
and religious-minded man, he was now a stern disciplinarian and a
cunning foe who fought to kill, rejoicing in the carnage that taught a
lesson and made for earlier peace. The mind that had dreamed of
universal brotherhood and the Oneness of Humanity now dreamed of
ambushes, night-attacks, slaughterous strategy and magazine-fire on a
cornered foe.

Surely and steadily the men enclosed behind the walls of the old Prison
rose into the ranks of the utterly reliable, the indefatigable, the
fearless and the fine, or sank into those of the shifty, unhearty,
unreliable, and unworthy--save the few who remained steadily mediocre,
well-meaning, unsoldierly, fairly trustworthy--a useful second line, but
not to be sent on forlorn h