recommends them to get well as soon as possible, as they are going to
be inoculated for enteric next week. So we grouse--and bear it.

There are other rifts within the military lute. At home we are persons
of some consequence, with very definite notions about the dignity of
labour. We have employers who tremble at our frown; we have Trades
Union officials who are at constant pains to impress upon us our own
omnipotence in the industrial world in which we live. We have at our
beck and call a Radical M.P. who, in return for our vote and suffrage,
informs us that we are the backbone of the nation, and that we must
on no account permit ourselves to be trampled upon by the effete
and tyrannical upper classes. Finally, we are Scotsmen, with all a
Scotsman's curious reserve and contempt for social airs and graces.

But in the Army we appear to be nobody. We are expected to stand
stiffly at attention when addressed by an officer; even to call him
"sir"--an honour to which our previous employer has been a stranger.
At home, if we happened to meet the head of the firm in the street,
and none of our colleagues was looking, we touched a cap, furtively.
Now, we have no option in the matter. We are expected to degrade
ourselves by meaningless and humiliating gestures. The N.C.O.'s are
almost as bad. If you answer a sergeant as you would a foreman, you
are impertinent; if you argue with him, as all good Scotsmen must, you
are insubordinate; if you endeavour to drive a collective bargain with
him, you are mutinous; and you are reminded that upon active service
mutiny is punishable by death. It is all very unusual and upsetting.

You may not spit; neither may you smoke a cigarette in the ranks, nor
keep the residue thereof behind your ear. You may not take beer to
bed with you. You may not postpone your shave till Saturday: you must