This daring inversion of accepted beliefs left me breathless, and I must repeat it in @ whisper lest I disturb the course of current controversy. But the idea that the German private is no soldier in the professional sense of the word is widely current behind the lines, and [have heard it again and again from the most competent oh. servers of the war. There is, I find, enormous respect for the German war-machine, but much less for the raw material which it consumes with such prodigality. Watching the German fighting-man as tinguished from the German General Staff has shaken some people in the confident belief in conseription with which they started in war, The praise of "Tommy"—everyone, by the way, speaks of "Tommy," and with an affectionate inflection which is wholly flattering—i everybody's lips.
ly," by_universal consent, is unsurpassed. He is the ideal man for the well-trained army; he shoots straight, has steady nerves, and brings a cheerful philosophy to bear upon all emergencies. He is disciplined, but also self-reliant, and there is a well-understood give and take between him and his offi cers, the best of whom know to a nicety what he can be asked to do and what not. I come to the conclusion that what he cannot be asked to do had better not be ached of anyone else. Tommy's humour gleams unquenchably through all the horrors and miseries of the war.
The brightest new coinage comes every day from his minting of the language; his sojourn in Normandy and Flanders may even in time produce a new patois. I have heard it said that heroes make bad pat-
899 lents, but Tommy in hospital is an exception to that rule, I have been in hospital wards when the most painful dressings were going on, and seldom heard a groan or a word of complaint. With a slight smile he may signal to you to stand by till it is over, for it helps him for you to see how well he can bear it He is all respect and gratitude to doctors and nurses, and it is they, and not he, who complain if there is anything lacking in the provision for the wounded. A distinguished surgeon who has been at work in the hospitals for the last three months told me very gravely that it was a real spiritual experience to work for these men. "Day by day," he said, "it comes over one what little use we make at home of this splendid human material, and I shall go back determined to do what I can to give this man and the class he comes from something to lose and something to work for when they have done fighting."
No Plaster Saint, Tommy is no plaster saint. hae his times at ease, and it is sometimes difficult to know what to do with him in the base towns and rest camps where he is awaiting orders for the front. The enticing and untested spirituous liquors of a new country lay traps for him, and even a Temperance advocate might doubt whether it would not be wiser to give him a "wet canteen" with the homebrewed heve: ages, whose intoxicating qualities are part of his experience, than to leave him to these experiments the unknown. And let no one ignore the appeals for games. A liberal supply of footballs, quoits, and, when the weather improve cricket-bats, balls, and stumps, will really add to the efficiency of the army. If men flag in spirit when they are in the rest camps and convalescent camps, and_physical exercise is the hest antidote.
A bad time comes for the slightly wounded or sick when, instead of being sent home to convalesce like their worse-wounded (and in this respect more fortunate) comrades, they go to the convalescent camps in France. But it makes all the difference whether these camps are controlled by men of character and energy, who know how to keep them happy and fit, or by routine officers who leave them to go their own way. T have seen splendid results achieved by one man in a camp of this kind, and when I went away he implored me above all things to send him games.
"Tommy" is the creation of the professional army, and exactly the material that his officer likes and understands T have heard some officers asking a little anxiously whether the new army with its leavening of intellectuals and sedentary young men may not be too good for this grim world of trench Original from
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.