HAPTER X

The regiments of the new armies have gathered into their rank and file
a mixed crowd transcending the dreams of Democracy. At one end of the
social scale are men of refined minds and gentle nurture, at the other
creatures from the slums, with slum minds and morals, and between them
the whole social gamut is run. Experience seems to show that neither
of the extreme elements tend, in the one case to elevate, or in the
other to debase the battalion. Leading the common life, sharing the
common hardships, striving towards common ideals, they inevitably,
irresistibly tend to merge themselves in the average. The highest in
the scale sink, the lowest rise. The process, as far as the change of
soul state is concerned, is infinitely more to the amelioration of the
lowest than to the degradation of the highest. The one, also, is more
real, the other more apparent. In the one case, it is merely the
shuffling-off of manners, of habits, of prejudices, and the assuming
of others horribly distasteful or humorously accepted, according to
temperament; in the other case, it is an enforced education. And all
the congeries of human atoms that make up the battalion, learn new and
precious lessons and acquire new virtues--patience, obedience,
courage, endurance.... But from the point of view of a decorous
tea-party in a cathedral town, the tone--or the standard of manners,
or whatever you would like by way of definition of that vague and
comforting word--the tone of the average is deplorably low. The
hooligan may be kicked for excessive foulness; but the rider of the
high horse is brutally dragged down into the mire. The curious part of
it all is that, the gutter element being eliminated altogether, the
corporate standard of the remaining majority is lower than the
standard of each individual.

By developing a philosophical disquisition on some such lines did
Phineas McPhail seek to initiate Doggie into the weird mysteries of
the new social life. Doggie heard with his ears, but thought in terms
of Durdlebury tea-parties. Nowhere in the mass could he find the
spiritual outlook of his Irish poet-warrior. The individuals that may
have had it kept it preciously to themselves. The outlook, as conveyed
in speech, was grossly materialistic. From the language of the canteen
he recoiled in disgust. He could not reconcile it with the nobler
attributes of the users. It was in vain for Phineas to plead that he
must accept the _lingua franca