There ain't better stuff to
make soldiers out of nowhere than Englishmen, God bless 'em! But they're
badgered, they're horribly badgered; and that's why the service don't
take over there, let alone the way the country grudge 'em every bit of
pay. In England you go in the ranks--well, they all just tell you you're
a blackguard, and there's the lash, and you'd better behave yourself or
you'll get it hot and hot; they take for granted you're a bad lot or
you wouldn't be there, and in course you're riled and go to the bad
according, seeing that it's what's expected of you. Here, contrariwise,
you come in the ranks and get a welcome, and feel that it just rests
with yourself whether you won't be a fine fellow or not; and just along
of feeling that you're pricked to show the best metal you're made on,
and not to let nobody else beat you out of the race, like. Ah! it makes
a wonderful difference to a fellow--a wonderful difference--whether the
service he's come into look at him as a scamp that never will be nothing
but a scamp, or as a rascal that's maybe got in him, all rascal though
he is, the pluck to turn into a hero. And that's just the difference,
sir, that France has found out, and England hasn't--God bless her, all
the same!"
With which the soldier whom England had turned adrift, and France had
won in her stead, concluded his long oration by dropping on his knees to
refill his Corporal's pipe.
"An army's just a machine, sir, in course," he concluded, as he rammed
in the Turkish tobacco.
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