h to drag his reluctant body along
with it into what impended. You see, with a very few exceptions none of
this outfit had been beyond the wires before. They had been under fire,
some of them--fire of gas shells and of shrapnel and of high explosives
in dugouts or in rear positions or as they passed along roads lying
under gun range of the enemy. But this matter would be different; this
experience would widely differ from any they had undergone. This meant
going out into the open to walk up against machine-gun fire and
small-arm fire. So each one asked himself the question.

Take a thousand fighting men. For purposes of argument let us say that
when the test of fighting comes five men out of that thousand cannot
readjust their nerves to the prospect of a violent end by powder and
ball from unseen sources. Under other circumstances any one of the five
might face a peril greater than that which now confronts him.
Conceivably he might flop into a swollen river to save a drowning puppy;
might dive into a burning building after some stranger's pet tabby cat.
But this prospect which lies before him of ambling across a field with
death singing about his ears, is a thing which tears with clawing
fingers at the tuggs and toggles of his imagination until his flesh
revolts to the point where it refuses the dare. It is such a man that
courts-martial and the world at large miscall by the hateful name of
coward.

Out of the remaining nine hundred and ninety-five are five more--as we
allow--who have so little of perception, who are so stolid, so dull of
wit and apprehension that they go into battle unmoved, unshaken,
unthinking. This leaves nine hundred and ninety who are afraid--sorely
and terribly afraid. They are afraid of being killed, afraid of being
crippled, afraid of venturing out where killings and cripplings are
carried on as branches of a highly specialised business.

But at the last they find that they fear just one thing more than they
fear death and dismemberment; and that this one supremest thing is the
fear that those about them may discover how terribly afraid they are. It
is this greater fear, overriding all those lesser terrors, that makes
over ordinary men into leaders of forlorn hopes, into holders of last
ditches, into bearers of heroic blazons, into sleepers under memorial
shafts erected by the citizens of a proud, a grateful and a sorrowing
country. A sense of self-respect is a terrific responsibility.

Und