ualism gave us confidence in our
physical prowess.

Alas! modern wars are not fought with fists. A knock-kneed man who
knows how to use a machine-gun and has one to use--which is also
quite important--could mow down all the leading heavy-weights of the
United States and England, with the latest champion leading the
charge.

Now, this regular who won our little wars was not representative of
the people as a whole. He was the man "down on his luck," who went
to the recruiting depot. Soldiering became his profession. He was in a
class, like priests and vagabonds. When you passed him in the street
you thought of him as a strange being, but one of the necessities of
national existence. It did not interest you to be a soldier; but as there
must be soldiers, you were glad that men who would be soldiers were
forthcoming.

When trouble broke, how you needed him! When the wires brought
news of his gallantry you accepted the deeds of this man whom you
had paid as the reflection of national courage, which thrilled you with
a sense of national superiority. To him, it was in the course of duty;
what he had been paid to do. He did not care about being called a
hero; but it pleased the public to make him one--this professional who
fights for a shilling a day in England and $17.50 a month in the United
States.

Though when the campaign went well the public was ready to take
the credit as a personal tribute, when the campaign went badly they
sought a scapegoat, and the general who might have been a hero
was sent to the wilderness perhaps because those busy men in
Congress or Parliament thought that the army could do without that
little appropriation which was needed for some other purpose. The
army had failed to deliver the goods which it was paid to produce.
The army was to blame, when, of course, under free institutions the
public was to blame, as the public is master of the army and not the
army of the public.

A first impression of the British army is always that of the regiment.
Pride of regiment sometimes appears almost more deep-seated than
army pride to the outsider. It has been so long a part of British martial
inheritance that it is bred in the blood. In the old days of small armies
and in the later days of small wars, while Europe was making every
man a soldier by conscription, regiment vying with regiment won the
battles of empire. The memory of the part each regiment played is the
inspiration of its present; its exis