first thing that he begins to talk to you
about, with honest pride, is his regiment. His regiment. Yes,
there is the secret which has worked these wonders; there is the
talisman which has humanized and civilized and raised from the mire
the once savage boor. He belongs to a regiment; in one word, he has
become the member of a body.

The member of a body, in which if one member suffers, all suffer
with it; if one member be honoured, all rejoice with it. A body,
which has a life of its own, and a government of its own, a duty of
its own, a history of its own, an allegiance to a sovereign, all
which are now his life, his duty, his history, his allegiance; he
does not now merely serve himself and his own selfish lusts: he
serves the Queen. His nature is not changed, but the thought that
he is the member of an honourable body has raised him above his
nature. If he forgets that, and thinks only of himself, he will
become selfish sluttish, drunken, cowardly, a bad soldier; as long
as he remembers it, he is a hero. He can face mobs now, and worse
than mobs: he can face hunger and thirst, fatigue, danger, death
itself, because he is the member of a body. For those know little,
little of human nature and its weakness, who fancy that mere brute
courage, as of an angry lion, will ever avail, or availed a few
short weeks ago, to spur our thousands up the steeps of Alma, or
across the fatal plain of Balaklava, athwart the corpses of their
comrades, upon the deadly throats of Russian guns. A nobler
feeling, a more heavenly thought was needed (and when needed, thanks
to God, it came!) to keep each raw lad, nursed in the lap of peace,
true to his country and his Queen through the valley of the shadow
of death. Not mere animal fierceness: but that tattered rag which
floated above his head, inscribed with the glorious names of Egypt
or Corunna, Toulouse or Waterloo, that it was which raised him into
a hero: he had seen those victories; the men who conquered there
were dead long since: but the regiment still lived, its history
still lived, its honour lived, and that history, that honour were
his, as well as those old dead warriors': he had fought side by
side with them in spirit, though not in the flesh; and now his turn
was come, and he must do as they did, and for their sakes, and count
his own life a worthless thing for the sake of the body which he
belonged to: he, but two years ago the idle, selfish country lad,
now