hy men like you join the Army--especially _this_ Army. Been a
nuisance ever since you came here. Drunk--beastly drunk--four times in
three weeks. Always dirty and insubordinate. Always trying to stir up
trouble among the young soldiers. Been in the army before, haven't
you?"

"No."

"That's not true. Can always tell an old soldier on parade. Fact is,
you have either deserted or been discharged as incorrigible. Going to
be discharged as incorrigible again. Keeping the regiment back, that's
why: that's a real crime. Go home, and explain that you were turned
out of the King's Army because you weren't worthy of the honour of
staying in. When decent men see that people like you have no place in
this regiment, perhaps they will see that this regiment is just the
place for them. Take him away."

Private M'Queen shambles out of the room for the last time in
his life. Captain Blaikie, a little exhausted by his own unusual
loquacity, turns to Bobby Little with a contented sigh.

"That's the last of the shysters," he says. "Been weeding them out for
six weeks. Now I have got rid of that nobleman I can look the rest of
the Company in the face. Come to breakfast!"

VI

THE LAWS OF THE MEDES AND PERSIANS

One's first days as a newly-joined subaltern are very like one's
first days at school. The feeling is just the same. There is the same
natural shyness, the same reverence for people who afterwards turn out
to be of no consequence whatsoever, and the same fear of transgressing
the Laws of the Medes and Persians--regimental traditions and
conventions--which alter not.

Dress, for instance. "Does one wear a sword on parade?" asks the tyro
of himself his first morning. "I'll put it on, and chance it." He
invests himself in a monstrous claymore and steps on to the barrack
square. Not an officer in sight is carrying anything more lethal than
a light cane. There is just time to scuttle back to quarters and
disarm.

Again, where should one sit at meal-times? We had supposed that the
C.O. would be enthroned at the head of the table, with a major sitting
on his right and left, like Cherubim and Seraphim; while the rest
disposed themselves in a descending scale of greatness until it came
down to persons like ourselves at the very foot. But the C.O. has a
disconcerting habit of sitting absolutely anywhere. He appears to be
just as happy between two Second Lieutenants as between Cherubim and
Seraphim. Again, we note that at