of guarding railways. After that a man wouldn�t trust his own mother. You don�t mean to say our cyclists let you know where we’ve come from last?�
�No, they didn’t,� I replied. �That was what worried me. I assumed you’d all committed murders, and had been sent here to live it down.�
Then they told me what guarding a line really means. How men wake and walk, with only express troop-trains to keep them company, all the night long on windy embankments or under still more windy bridges; how they sleep behind three sleepers up-ended or a bit of tin, or, if they are lucky, in a platelayer’s hut; how their food comes to them slopping across the square-headed ties that lie in wait to twist a man’s ankle after dark; how they stand in blown coal-dust of goods-yards trying to watch five lines of trucks at once; how fools of all classes pester the lonely pickets, whose orders are to hold up motors for inquiry, and then write silly letters to the War Office about it. How nothing ever happens through the long weeks but infallibly would if the patrols were taken off. And they had one refreshing story of a workman who at six in the morning, which is no auspicious hour to jest with Lancashire, took a short cut to his work by ducking under some goods-wagons, and when challenged by the sentry replied, posturing on all fours, �Boo, I�m a German!� Whereat the upright sentry fired, unfortunately missed him, and then gave him the butt across his ass’s head, so that his humour, and very nearly his life, terminated. After which the sentry was seldom seen to smile, but frequently heard to murmur, �Ah should hev slipped t’ baggonet into him.�
Pride and Prejudice:
�So you see,� said the officers in conclusion, �you mustn’t be surprised that our men wouldn’t tell you much.�
�I begin to see,� I said. �How many of you are coal and how many cotton?�
�Two-thirds coal and one-third cotton, roughly. It keeps the men deadly keen. An operative isn�t going to give up while a pitman goes on; and very much vice versa.�
�That�s class-prejudice,� said I.
�It’s most useful,� said they. The officers themselves seemed to be interested in coal or cotton, and had known their men intimately on the civil side. If your orderly-room sergeant, or your quarter- master has been your trusted head clerk or foreman for ten or twelve years, and if eight out of a dozen sergeants have controlled pitmen and machinists, above and below ground, and eighty per cent of these pitmen and machinists are privates in the companies, your regiment works with something of the precision of a big business.
It was all new talk to me, for I had not yet met a Northern Territorial battalion with the strong pride of its strong town behind it. Where were they when the war came? How had they equipped themselves? I wanted to hear the tale. It was worth listening to as told with North-Country joy of life and the doing of things in that soft down- country house of the untroubled centuries. Like every one else, they were expecting anything but war. �Hadn’t even begun their annual camp. Then the thing came, and Bolton rose as one man and woman to fit out its battalion. There was a lady who wanted a fairly large sum of money for the men’s extra footgear. She set aside a morning to collect it, and inside the hour came home with nearly twice her needs, and spent the rest of the time trying to make people take back fivers, at least, out of tenners. And the big hauling firms flung horses and transport at them and at the Government, often refusing any price, or, when it was paid, turning it into the war funds. What the battalion wanted it had but to ask for. Once it was short of, say, towels. An officer approached the head of a big firm, with no particular idea he would get more than a few dozen from that quarter.
�And how many towels d�you want?� said the head of the firm. The officer suggested a globular thousand.
�I think you’ll do better with twelve hundred,� was the curt answer. �They’re ready out yonder. Get ‘em.�
And in this style Bolton turned out her battalion. Then the authorities took it and strung it by threes and fives along several score miles of railway track: and it had only just been reassembled, and it had been inoculated for typhoid. Consequently, they said (but all officers are like mothers and motorcar owners), it wasn’t up to what it would be in a little time. In spite of the cyclist, I had had a good look at the deep-chested battalion in the park, and after getting their musketry figures, it seemed to me that very soon it might be worth looking at by more prejudiced persons than myself.
[Thanks to the miniature rifle clubs fostered by Lord Roberts a certain number of recruits in all the armies come to their regiments with a certain knowledge of sighting, rifle- handling, and the general details of good shooting, especially at snap and disappearing work.]
The next day I read that this battalion’s regular battalion in the field had distinguished itself by a piece of work which, in other wars, would have been judged heroic. Bolton will read it, not without remarks, and other towns who love Bolton, more or less, will say that if all the truth could come out their regiments had done as well. Anyway, the result will be more men - pitmen, millhands, clerks, checkers, weighers, winders, and hundreds of those sleek, well-groomed business-chaps whom one used to meet in the big Midland hotels, protesting that war was out of date. These latter develop surprisingly in the camp atmosphere. I recall one raging in his army shirt-sleeves at a comrade who had derided his principles. �I am a blanky pacificist,� he hissed, �and I’m proud of it, and - and I’m going to make you one before I’ve finished with you!’
The Secret of the Services
Pride of city, calling, class, and creed imposes standards and obligations which hold men above themselves at a pinch, and steady them through long strain. One meets it in the New Army at every turn, from the picked Territorials who slipped across Channel last night to the six-week-old Service battalion maturing itself in mud. It is balanced by the ineradicable English instinct to understate, detract, and decry - to mask the thing done by loudly drawing attention to the things undone. The more one sees of the camps the more one is filled with facts and figures of joyous significance, which will become clearer as the days lengthen; and the less one hears of the endurance, decency, self-sacrifice, and utter devotion which have made, and are hourly making, this wonderful new world. The camps take this for granted - else why should any man be there at all? He might have gone on with his business, or - watched �soccer�. But having chosen to do his bit, he does it, and talks as much about his motives as he would of his religion or his love-affairs. He is eloquent over the shortcomings of the authorities, more pessimistic as to the future of his next neighbour battalion than would be safe to print, and lyric on his personal needs - baths and drying- rooms for choice. But when the grousing gets beyond a certain point - say at three a.m. in steady wet, with the tent-pegs drawing like false teeth - the nephew of the insurance-agent asks the cousin of the baronet to inquire of the son of the fried-fish vendor what the stevedore’s brother and the tutor of the public school joined the Army for. Then they sing �Somewhere the Sun is Shining�till the Sergeant Ironmonger’s assistant cautions them to drown in silence or the Lieutenant Telephone-appliances-manufacturer will speak to them in the morning.
The New armies have not yet evolved their typical private, n.-c.-o., and officer, though one can see them shaping. They are humorous because, for all our long faces, we are the only genuinely humorous race on earth; but they all know for true that there are no excuses in the Service. �If there were,� said a three-month- old under-gardener-private to me, �what �ud become of Discipline?�
They are already setting standards for the coming millions, and have sown little sprouts of regimental tradition which may grow into age-old trees. In one corps, for example, though no dubbin is issued a man loses his name for parad- ing with dirty boots. He looks down scornfully on the next battalion where they are not expected to achieve the impossible. In another - an ex- Guards sergeant brought ‘em up by hand - the drill is
