are. But since the others are all in step
with each other, I am afraid the presumptive evidence is rather heavily
against Jock. And Jock is well known to all of us. Nobody likes him,
and nobody knows why they don't like him. In many respects he is a
paragon of goodness. He loves his church, or he would not have stuck
to it year in and year out as he has done. He is not self-assertive;
he is quite willing to efface his own personality and be invisible. He
is generous to a fault. Nobody is more eager to do anything for the
general good. And yet nobody likes him. The only thing against him is
that he has never disciplined himself to get on with other people. He
has never tried to accommodate himself to their stride. He can't keep
rank. They're a' oot o' step but our Jock! Poor Jock!

V

I know that out of all this a serious problem emerges. The problem is
this: why should Jock destroy his own personality in order to render
himself an exact replica of every other man in the regiment? Is
individuality an evil thing that must be wiped out and obliterated?
The answer to this objection is that Jock is not asked to sacrifice his
personality; he is asked to sacrifice his angularity. The ideal of
British discipline is, not to turn men into machines, but to preserve
individuality and initiative; and yet, at the same time, to make each
man of as great value to his comrades as is by any means possible. In
the church we do the same. Brown means well, but he is all gush. You
ask him to do a thing. 'Oh, certainly, with the greatest pleasure in
the world!' But you have an awkward feeling that he will undertake a
thousand other duties in the same airy way, and that the chances of his
doing the work, and doing it well, are not rosy. Smith, on the other
hand, is cautious. He, too, means well; but he is unduly scared of
promising more than he can creditably fulfil; and, as a matter of fact,
this bogy frightens him out of doing as much as he might and should.
Now here you have Brown running and Smith crawling. You know perfectly
well that Brown will exhaust himself quite prematurely, and that Smith
will never get there. And between Brown's excited scamper and Smith's
exasperating crawl the main host jogs along at a medium pace. Now
Brown's personality is a delightful thing. You can't help loving him.
His willingness is charming, and his enthusiasm contagious. And
Smith's steady persistence and extreme conscien