ranks as the war-stained regiments swing along
from battle to battle on the dusty road to Victory.

II

SENSATIONS UNDER FIRE

It is said of Sir John French that, on his own admission, he has "never
done anything worth doing without having to screw himself up to it."
There is no hint here of practical fear, which the hardened soldier, the
fighting man, rarely experiences; but of the moral and mental conflict
which precedes the assumption of sovereign duties and high commands.
Every man who goes into battle has this need. He requires the moral
preparation of knowing why he is fighting, and what he is fighting for.
In the present war, Lord Kitchener's fine message to every soldier in
the Expeditionary Force made this screwing-up process easy. But to men
going under fire for the first time some personal preparation is also
necessary to combat the ordinary physical terror of the battlefield.

Soldiers are not accustomed to self-analysis. They are mainly men of
action, and are supposed to lack the contemplative vision. That was the
old belief. This war, however, which has shattered so many accepted
ideas, has destroyed that conviction too. Nothing is more surprising
than the revelation of their feelings disclosed in the soldiers'
letters. They are the most intimate of human documents. Here and there a
hint is given of the apprehension with which the men go into action,
unspoken fears of how they will behave under fire, the uncertainty of
complete mastery over themselves, brief doubts of their ability to stand
up to this new and sublime ordeal of death.

Rarely, however, do the men allow these apprehensions to depress or
disturb them. Throughout the earliest letters from the front the one
pervading desire was eagerness for battle--a wild impatience to get the
first great test of their courage over, to feel their feet, obtain
command of themselves.

"We were all eager for scalps," writes one of the Royal Engineers, "and
I took the cap, sword, and lance of a Uhlan I shot through the chest."
An artilleryman says a gunner in his battery was "so anxious to see the
enemy," that he jumped up to look, and got his leg shot away. Others
tell of the intense curiosity of the young soldiers to see everything
that is going on, of their reckless neglect of cover, and of the
difficulty of holding them back when they see a comrade fall. "In spite
of orders, some of my men actually charged a machine gun," an officer
related. Aft