shooting will look after itself. It's the bayonet I talk to them
about, and where to put it, and how to use it. As you know yourself,
sir, a man will shoot to kill, where he'll hesitate to use his
bayonet--if he's new."

"That's so. It's instinctive at times."

"Bedad, sir, they have no instinct when I've finished with them--save
one. Kill clean and kill fast; and God help you if you slip. . . ."

It is possible that when a person has given no thought to war, and the
objects of war, this distinction may seem strange. Death is a big
matter to the average being, and one of some finality; and the manner
of one's going may strike him as of little account. In which
assumption he is perfectly right--if he is the member of the party who
is going to be killed. But that is not the idea which a man going into
a scrap should hold for a moment. A man goes into a scrap to kill--not
to be killed. To die for one's country may be glorious; to kill for
one's country is very much more so, and a deuced sight less
uncomfortable. Wherefore, as Jimmy O'Shea would have said, if you'd
asked him, "It's outing the other swine you're after, me bucko; not
being outed yourself. Once you've got your manicured lunch hooks (as a
phrase for hands I liked that sentence) on the blighter's throat, it's
up to you to kill him before he kills you. And don't forget it's no
dress rehearsal show. You won't fail twice."

Now I do not wish to appear over-bloodthirsty, or to pretend for one
moment that war is a gigantic and continuous shambles. It is not. But
the essence of war is man power, and the points are scored by putting
men out of action, without being put out of action yourself. The idea
may not be nice--but war is not nice: one may not approve of the sea
being salt, but disapproval does not alter hard truth. And having once
granted that fact--and surely none can deny it--it is the different
methods of scoring points which must be discussed. Some are
impersonal--some are not: some are done in cold blood--some in hot.
The whole thing is just a question of human nature; and in war, above
every other known thing in this world, it is human nature that tells:
it is human nature that is the great deciding factor. A man throws a
bomb into a saphead full of Huns. He lies there covered by the
darkness, crouching, waiting---- One, two, three--and the sharp roar
of the explosion shatters the peace of the night. Guttural cursings
and a drea