And then when he thinks how little he deserves all this love and loyalty, the subaltern’s heart aches with a feeling that can find no expression either in word or deed.

This is a tale that has often been told, and that people in England know by heart.  It cannot be told too often.  It cannot be learnt too well.  For the time will come when we shall need to remember it, and when it will be easy to forget.  Will you remember it, O ye people, when the boy has become a man, and the soldier has become a workman?  But there are other tales to tell.  There are the tales of the sergeant-major and the sergeants, the corporals and the “lance-jacks.”  Sergeant-majors, sergeants, and corporals are not romantic figures.  If you think of them at all, you probably think of rumjars and profanity.  Yet they are the very backbone of the Army.  I have been a sergeant and I have been a private soldier, and I know that the latter has much the better time of the two.  He at least has the kind of liberty which belongs to utter irresponsibility.  If he breaks bounds in the exuberance of his spirits, no one thinks much worse of him as long as he does not make a song about paying the penalty!

Of course he has to be punished.  So many days of sleeping in the guard tent, extra fatigues, pack-drill, and perhaps a couple of hours tied up, as an example to evil-doers.  But if he has counted the cost, and pays the price with a grin, we just say “Young scamp!” and dismiss the matter.  But if a sergeant or a corporal does the same, that’s a very different matter.  He has shown himself unfit for his job.  He has betrayed a trust.  We cannot forgive him.  Responsibility has its disadvantages.  The senior N.C.O. gets no relaxation from discipline.  In the line and out of it he must always be watchful, self-controlled, orderly.  He must never wink.  These men have not the glamour of the boy private; but their high sense of duty and discipline, their keenness and efficiency, merit all the honour that we can give them.

Finally—­for it would not do for a subaltern to discuss his superiors—­we come to the junior officer.  Somehow I fancy that in the public eye he too is a less romantic figure than the private.  One does not associate him with privations and hardships, but with parcels from home.  Well, it is quite right.  He has such a much less uncomfortable time than his men that he does not deserve or want sympathy on that score.  He is better off in every way.  He has better quarters, better food, more kit, a servant, and in billets far greater liberty.  And yet there is many a man who is now an officer who looks back on his days as a private with regret.  Could he have his time over again ... yes, he would take a commission; but he would do so, not with any thought for the less hardship of it, but from a stern sense of duty—­the sense of duty which does not allow a man with any self-respect to refuse to shoulder a heavier burden when called upon to do so.