We are getting less individualistic, too.  We are beginning to think more of our regiment and less of ourselves.  At first this loyalty takes the form of criticising other regiments, because their marching is slovenly, or their accoutrements dirty, or—­most significant sign of all—­their discipline is bad.  We are especially critical of our own Eighth Battalion, which is fully three weeks younger than we are, and is not in the First Hundred Thousand at all.  In their presence we are war-worn veterans.  We express it as our opinion that the officers of some of these battalions must be a poor lot.  From this it suddenly comes home to us that our officers are a good lot, and we find ourselves taking a queer pride in our company commander’s homely strictures and severe sentences the morning after pay-night.  Here is another step in the quickening life of the regiment. Esprit de corps is raising its head, class prejudice and dour “independence” notwithstanding.

Again, a timely hint dropped by the Colonel on battalion parade this morning has set us thinking.  We begin to wonder how we shall compare with the first-line regiments when we find ourselves “oot there.”  Silently we resolve that when we, the first of the Service Battalions, take our place in trench or firing line alongside the Old Regiment, no one shall be found to draw unfavourable comparisons between parent and offspring.  We intend to show ourselves chips of the old block.  No one who knows the Old Regiment can ask more of a young battalion than that.

IV

THE CONVERSION OF PRIVATE M’SLATTERY

One evening a rumour ran round the barracks.  Most barrack rumours die a natural death, but this one was confirmed by the fact that next morning the whole battalion, instead of performing the usual platoon exercises, was told off for instruction in the art of presenting arms.  “A” Company discussed the portent at breakfast.

“What kin’ o’ a thing is a Review?” inquired Private M’Slattery.

Private Mucklewame explained.  Private M’Slattery was not impressed, and said so quite frankly.  In the lower walks of the industrial world Royalty is too often a mere name.  Personal enthusiasm for a Sovereign whom they have never seen, and who in their minds is inextricably mixed up with the House of Lords, and capitalism, and the police, is impossible to individuals of the stamp of Private M’Slattery.  To such, Royalty is simply the head and corner-stone of a legal system which officiously prevents a man from being drunk and disorderly, and the British Empire an expensive luxury for which the working man pays while the idle rich draw the profits.