with our own hands. Now that broadens one's horizon at once.
We are not bounded by sandbags and stinks; when we are in the trenches,
we know--our imagination tells us--that over the way are men whom we
can visualise: living, actual beings whose ideal and object in life is
to kill us. Not so, I regret to say, with a new draft: how can you
expect it? To them the Hun is a strange something living in a trench,
whom they never see, and whom they don't particularly want to. One
might almost say that 'live and let live' is bound to be the way they
look at life at present. Until the terrier sees the rat he has no wish
to kill it; and until he has killed it he has no idea what a delightful
occupation it is. Same with the men; and we've got to alter it."

"Bravely spoken, sir, as the poets would say," remarked the Honourable
James. "The only point is how to do it."

"Easy as falling off a log. One night we will pay the Huns a visit and
kill 'em. Cheery amusement, charming hobby. The terriers will get
bitten on the nose, and as soon as that happens they'll see red. Then
they'll start to kill; and once they've done that there will be no
holding them. Their tails will be stickin' up above their heads."

"It was done a few weeks ago up the line, wasn't it?" The
second-in-command thoughtfully replenished his glass.

"I believe it was--but what matter? The Stick'ems don't require any
damned pilot for their fences." The C.O. brought a fist like a leg of
mutton down on the table. "Before the division leaves the line, we are
going to visit the Hun; we are going to kill the Hun; we are going to
capture the swab, to wound him, to out him; and when we've done it and
got him as wild as a civet cat in the nesting season, we'll laugh at
him by platoons."

"Prolonged applause from a breathless audience," laughed the Adjutant.
"We can merely murmur a Benedictined Bismillah." . . .

Now it is possible that to those who sit at home, and regard war from
arm-chairs as a movement of little flags on a large-scale map, the
words of Toby Seymour may come in the nature of a surprise. It is
possible that they have never really thought about the human side of
killing: of killing as a hobby--as a trade. Vaguely they realise that
a soldier does not go into the army to pick buttercups; vaguely they
understand that men die and are killed in war, and that soldiers are
the people who kill and are killed. But I venture to think that they