This principle is extended, too, to the enforcement of law and order.
If Private M'Sumph is insubordinate or riotous, there is never any
question of informal correction or summary justice. News of the
incident wends its way upward, by a series of properly regulated
channels, to the officer in command. Presently, by the same route, an
order comes back, and in a twinkling the offender finds himself taken
under arrest and marched off to the guard-room by two of his own
immediate associates. (One of them may be his own rear-rank man.) But
no officer or non-commissioned officer ever lays a finger on him. The
penalty for striking a superior officer is so severe that the law
decrees, very wisely, that a soldier must on no account ever be
arrested by any save men of his own rank. If Private M'Sumph, while
being removed in custody, strikes Private Tosh upon the nose and kicks
Private Cosh upon the shin, to the effusion of blood, no great harm is
done--except to the lacerated Cosh and Tosh; but if he had smitten an
intruding officer in the eye, his punishment would have been dire and
grim. So, though we may call military law cumbrous and grandmotherly,
there is sound sense and real mercy at the root of it.

* * * * *

But there is one Law of the Medes and Persians which is sensibly
relaxed these days. We, the newly joined, have always been given to
understand that whatever else you do, you must never, never betray any
interest in your profession--in short, talk shop--at Mess. But in our
Mess no one ever talks anything else. At luncheon, we relate droll
anecdotes concerning our infant platoons; at tea, we explain, to any
one who will listen, exactly how we placed our sentry line in last
night's operations; at dinner, we brag about our Company musketry