This is about as much like our dear, old, real Tommy Atkins as Kipling’s portrait was.  Such a likeness does no honour to the man.  It is simply lifeless.  Whatever Tommy is, he is a man; not a round-eyed, pink-cheeked waxwork stuffed with bran.  The truth is coarse and strong, but he can stand having the truth told about him.

Soldiers as a class (I take the town-bred, slum-bred majority, mind) are men who have discarded the civil standard of morality altogether.  They simply ignore it.  This, no doubt, is why civilians fight shy of them.  In the game of life they don’t play the same rules, and the consequence is a good deal of misunderstanding, until finally the civilian says he won’t play with the Tommy any more.  In soldiers’ eyes lying, theft, drunkenness, bad language, &c., are not evils at all.  They steal like jackdaws.  No man’s kit or belongings are safe for an instant in their neighbourhood unless under the owner’s eye.  To “lift” or “pinch” anything from anybody is one of the Tommy’s ordinary everyday interests, a thing to be attended to and borne in mind along with his other daily cares and duties.  Nothing is more common than to see some distracted private rushing about in search of a missing article, which he declares in anguished tones he has only just that instant laid down; his own agitation a marked contrast to the elaborate indifference of every one near him.

As to language, I used to think the language of a merchant ship’s fo’c’sle pretty bad, but the language of Tommies in point of profanity quite equals, and in point of obscenity beats it hollow.  This department is a speciality of his.  Of course, after a little it becomes simply meaningless, and you scarcely notice it, but the haphazard and indiscriminate way, quite regardless of any meaning, in which he interlards ordinary sentences with beastly words, at first revolts you.  Lying he treats with the same large charity.  To lie like a trooper is quite a sound metaphor.  He invents all sorts of elaborate lies for the mere pleasure of inventing them.  He will come back from headquarters and tell you of the last despatch which he has just read with his own eyes (a victory or disaster, according to his mood at the moment), with all kinds of realistic details added; and you go and see for yourself, and there is no despatch at all.  Looting, again, is one of his perpetual joys.  Not merely looting for profit, though I have seen Tommies take possession of the most ridiculous things—­perambulators and sewing machines, with a vague idea of carting them home somehow—­but looting for the sheer fun of the destruction; tearing down pictures to kick their boots through them; smashing furniture for the fun of smashing it, and may be dressing up in women’s clothes to finish with, and dancing among the ruins they have made.  To pick up a good heavy stone and send it wallop right through the works of a piano is a great moment for Tommy.  I daresay there is something in it, you know.