There appears elsewhere today some salutary advice to recruits from China who are either in Malaya undergoing training or hope shortly to go there. The recruits may appear to be under some initial disadvantage through being drafted into units composed of fully trained men, but they are not unique in this, The same thing occurred to every man who passed through the Pranks in the last war, and in many cases it Proved an incentive todo his best, rather than a discouragement, since the recruit "on the square" was rather looked down upon by the men "in the company"—as it was described then—and there was thus an additional reason for the recruit to learn his drill and do it well, so as to qualify as a fully trained soldier as early as possible, It seems that the Army breeds a special kind of sergeant to drill recruits, and he seems during the first agonizing weeks on the square to be first cousin to Beelzebub, and to live entirely upon nails and broken glass, which have warped his nature until he delights in all manner of savagery at the expense of his victims, To this man it is, or appears to be, the worst possible offence to know anything at all about drill except what he has taught the re-fruit, For a man to join up with some experience of drill, such as in the S, V.C, and ta parade his knowledge in the hope that it will save him from the worst of the recruit's ordeal, is simply to ask for trouble, The drill sergeant seems to take a heartless delight in showing such a rash venturer that he knows absolutely nothing at all, or if he has learnt an thing at the hands of some other instructors, he has learnt it all wrong, During his period on the square the recruit usually goes in fear and trembling of this drill sergeant, but he will be agreeably surprised after he has graduate ed through the recruit stage to find that the sergeant is quite a pleasant fellow after all, And should he actually win himself a stripe or two, he will find the sergeant among the first of the many who appear on such occasions anxious to drink the health of the promoted person—at the promoted person's expense, of course, Fatigues are the bane of the recruits existence, but it would appear from the account given today, that the fatigues are easier in Malaya than they would be at Home, There is no mention of a cook-house fatigue, for example, The cook-house fatigue, which at Home consists in peeling potatoes and cleaning out great vats in which stew has been cooked, had only one compensation and that was that the men on it fed slightly better than the others, since the cooks usually kept the best of everything for themselves, To the recruit, also, there may seem at first that the insistence that every bit of equipment should be kept so clean that the commanding officer could almost shave himself in its reflection, is simply one more form of tyranny, But he will learn, when he has got used to it, to take a pride in keeping his equipment in such a condition, and be as down upon the slovenly soldier who disgraces his company or platoon by appearing on parade dirty or going out without his buttons shining like miniature suns, as the strictest sergeant was once down on him,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.