hover outside the larger stations, touch a bedraggled cap
with a filthy finger, and say, "Kerry yer beg, sir?" in a threatening
tone to all passers-by; his main income, however, appeared to come from
far less respectable sources.

And yet he served me more faithfully than I have ever been served before
or since, and I have seldom been more sorry than I was when "Nobby"
Clarke was hit. As we were tying him up--he had been wounded in eight
places by a rifle grenade--he signed to me and I stooped over him.

"I ain't got no one at 'ome as cares fer me," he said, "so yer might
'and me things round to the blokes 'ere. I've got a photograph of me ole
woman wot died five years ago. It's in me pay book, sir, an' I'd like
yer to keep it jest to remind yer of me." Then, his voice getting weaker
every moment, "I ain't been such a bad servant to yer, 'as I, sir?" he
whispered, his eyes looking appealingly into mine. And when "Nobby"
Clarke, onetime loafer and pickpocket, passed away, I am not ashamed to
own that there was a queer sort of lump in my throat.

And he was only one of many, was "Nobby" Clarke. There was Bennett, the
tramp, who was always ready with a song to cheer up the weary on the
march; there was a Jewish money-lender who was killed while trying to
save a man who was lying wounded in No Man's Land; there was Phillips,
who had been convicted of manslaughter--he became a stretcher-bearer,
and was known all over the battalion for his care of the wounded.

In every regiment in every army you will find a little group of men who
were tramps and beggars and thieves, and, almost without exception, they
have "made good." For the first time in their lives they have been
accepted as members of great society, and not driven away as outcasts.
The Army has welcomed them, disciplined them, and taught them the
elements of self-respect--a quality whose very existence they ignored
before the war.

There is an Italian proverb--"Tutto il mondo e paese"--which means, in
its broadest sense, "All the world is ruled by the same passion and
qualities." In the old days it needed a Dickens, and, later, a Neil
Lyons to discover the qualities of the criminal classes; now war has
brought us all together--the erstwhile city merchant warms himself
before the same brazier as the man who would have picked his pocket
three years before--and we suddenly find that we are no better than the
beggar, and that a man who stole apples from a stall is no