Mr. Wilson has launched a new phrase on the world—­“Peace without Victory”; but War is not going to be ended by phrases, and the man who is doing more than anyone else to end it—­the British infantryman—­has no use for them: 

  The gunner rides on horseback, he lives in luxury,
  The sapper has his dug-out as cushy as can be,
  The flying man’s a sportsman, but his home’s a long way back,
  In painted tent or straw-spread barn or cosy little shack;
  Gunner and sapper and flying man (and each to his job say I)
  Have tickled the Hun with mine or gun or bombed him from on high,
  But the quiet work, and the dirty work, since ever the War began,
  Is the work that never shows at all, the work of the infantryman.

  The guns can pound the villages and smash the trenches in,
  And the Hun is fain for home again when the T.M.B.s begin,
  And the Vickers gun is a useful one to sweep a parapet,
  But the real work is the work that’s done with bomb and bayonet. 
  Load him down from heel to crown with tools and grub and kit,
  He’s always there where the fighting is—­he’s there unless he’s hit;
  Over the mud and the blasted earth he goes where the living can;
  He’s in at the death while he yet has breath, the British infantryman!

  Trudge and slip on the shell-hole’s lip, and fall in the clinging mire—­
  Steady in front, go steady!  Close up there!  Mind the wire! 
  Double behind where the pathways wind!  Jump clear of the ditch, jump
                clear! 
  Lost touch at the back?  Oh, halt in front!  And duck when the shells come
                near! 
  Carrying parties all night long, all day in a muddy trench,
  With your feet in the wet and your head in the rain and the sodden
                khaki’s stench! 
  Then over the top in the morning, and onward all you can—­
  This is the work that wins the War, the work of the infantryman.

And if anyone should think that this means the permanent establishment of militarism in our midst let him be comforted by the saying of an old sergeant-major when asked to give a character of one of his men.  “He’s a good man in the trenches, and a good man in a scrap; but you’ll never make a soldier of him.”  The new armies fight all the harder because they want to make an end not of this war but of all wars.  As for the regulars, there is no need to enlarge on their valour.  But it is pleasant to put on record the description of an officer’s servant which has reached Mr. Punch from France:  “Valet, cook, porter, boots, chamber-maid, ostler, carpenter, upholsterer, mechanic, inventor, needlewoman, coalheaver, diplomat, barber, linguist (home-made), clerk, universal provider, complete pantechnicon and infallible bodyguard, he is also a soldier, if a very old soldier, and a man of the most human kind.”