We know that each one of those men is an individual, full of
human affections, many of them writing tender letters home every
week, each one longing with all his soul for the end of this hateful
business of war which divides him from all that he loves best in
life. We know that every one of these men has a healthy individual's
repugnance to being maimed, and a human shrinking from hurt and from
the Valley of the Shadow of Death.

The knowledge of all this does not do away with the even tread of the
troops as they pass, the steady eye and mouth, the cheery jest; but
it makes these a hundred times more significant. For we know that what
these things signify is not lack of human affection, or weakness, or
want of imagination, but something superimposed on these, to which
they are wholly subordinated. Over and above the individuality of
each man, his personal desires and fears and hopes, there is the
corporate personality of the soldier which knows no fear and only one
ambition--to defeat the enemy, and so to further the righteous cause
for which he is fighting. In each of those men there is this dual
personality: the ordinary human ego that hates danger and shrinks from
hurt and death, that longs for home, and would welcome the end of the
war on any terms; and also the stronger personality of the soldier who
can tolerate but one end to this war, cost what that may--the victory
of liberty and justice, and the utter abasement of brute force.

And when one looks back over the months of training that the soldier
has had, one recognizes how every feature of it, though at the time
it often seemed trivial and senseless and irritating, was in reality
directed to this end. For from the moment that a man becomes a
soldier his dual personality begins. Henceforth he is both a man and
a soldier. Before his training is complete the order must be reversed,
and he must be a soldier and a man. As a soldier he must obey and
salute those whom, as a man, he very likely dislikes and despises. In
his conduct he no longer only has to consider his reputation as a man,
but still more his honour as a soldier. In all the conditions of his
life, his dress, appearance, food, drink, accommodation, and work, his
individual preferences count for nothing, his efficiency as a soldier
counts for everything. At first he "hates" this, and "can't see
the point of" that. But by the time his training is complete he has
realized that whether he hates a thing or