siness offices or behind counters, whom I saw in workshops or in the
field or who were my neighbours in music-halls. They were strangers. In
the years to come I hope they will be strangers no longer. For they and
I have dressed alike and borne the same surname--Atkins.

Of course, there remain a few generalisations which _can_ safely be
risked about even so nondescript a person as the new Tommy Atkins. As
practically all the Tommy Atkinses are, at this moment, concentrated on
the prosecution of one great job, it is natural that their main
interests should revolve round that job. They all (for instance) want
the job to be finished. They all (within my experience) want it to be
finished well. They nearly all desire earnestly to cease soldiering as
soon as the job _is_ finished well. I never yet met the man (though he
may exist, outside the brains of the scribes aforementioned) who, having
tasted the joys of roughing it, is determined not to return to a humdrum
desk in an office: on the contrary, that office and that humdrum desk
have now become this travelled adventurer's most roseate dream. I have
conversed with patients drawn from nearly every walk in life, and I do
not remember one who definitely spoke of refusing to go back to his
former work--if he could get it.

One of my patients had been a subterranean lavatory attendant. You would
have thought his ambitions--after visits to Egypt, Malta, the
Dardanelles and France--might have soared to loftier altitudes. He had
survived hair-raising adventures; he had taken part in the making of
history; although wounded he had not been incapacitated for an active
career in the future; and he was neither illiterate nor unintelligent.
Yet he told me, with obvious satisfaction, that his place was being kept
open for him. I was, as it were, invited to rejoice with him over the
destiny which was his. I may add that the singular revelations which he
imparted as to the opportunities for extra earnings in his troglodyte
trade extorted from me a more enthusiastic sympathy than might be
supposed possible.

That agreeable domestic pet, _homo sapiens_, remains unchanged even when
you dress him up in a uniform and set him fighting. He is always
consistently inconsistent; he is always both reasonable and
unreasonable. You can try to cast him in a mould, but he resumes his
normal shapelessness the moment the mould is removed. Expose him to
frightful ordeals of terror and pain, and he will em