, is God, all
on your side? Is Time on your side? Shall I go back to my master and
tell him that you need no more of his inventions?

(_He pauses, and glances at the_ POTENTATE _with a look of
contempt, and then turns to go. The_ POTENTATE _looks round
him with a ghastly stare._)

POTENTATE (_feebly_). No ... the Crucified ... Time ... Stay, stay!

(_The_ SAGE _turns with a gesture of triumph._)

(_Curtain._)

II

THE BAD SIDE OF MILITARY SERVICE

A Padre who has earned the right to talk about the "average Tommy,"
writes to me that _A Student in Arms_ gives a very one-sided picture
of him. While cordially admitting his unselfishness, his good
comradeship, his patience, and his pluck, my friend challenges me
to deny that military, and especially active, service often has a
brutalizing effect on the soldier, weakening his moral fibres, and
causing him to sink to a low animal level.

Those who are in the habit of reading between the lines will, I
think, often have seen the shadow of this darker side of army life
on the pages of _A Student in Arms_; but I have not written of it
specifically for several reasons. It will suffice if I mention two.
First, I was writing mainly of the private and the N.C.O. Rightly
or wrongly, I imagined that those for whom I was writing were in the
habit of taking for granted this darker side of life in the ranks. I
imagined that they thought of the "lower classes" as being naturally
coarser and more animal than the "upper classes." I wanted then, and I
want now, to contradict that belief with all the vehemence of which I
am capable. Officers and men necessarily develop different qualities,
different forms of expression, different mental attitudes. But I am
confident that I speak the truth when I say that essentially, and in
the eyes of God there is nothing to choose between them.

If I must write of the brutalizing effect of war on the soldier, let
it be clearly understood that I am speaking, not of officers only,
nor of privates only, but of fighting men of every class and rank.
As a matter of fact I have never, whether before or during the war,
belonged to a mess where the tone was cleaner or more wholesome than
it was in the Sergeants' Mess of my old battalion.

My second reason for not writing about the bad side of Army life was
that mere condemnation is so futile. I have listened to countless
sermons in which the "lusts of the flesh" were denounced,