soldiering! I like to think that they will guard the liberty of their
manhood even beyond the point of prudence.

A lettered German, speaking to me once of his year of military service,
told me that, had it lasted but a month or two longer, he must have
sought release in suicide. I know very well that my own courage would
not have borne me to the end of the twelvemonth; humiliation, resentment,
loathing, would have goaded me to madness. At school we used to be
"drilled" in the playground once a week; I have but to think of it, even
after forty years, and there comes back upon me that tremor of passionate
misery which, at the time, often made me ill. The senseless routine of
mechanic exercise was in itself all but unendurable to me; I hated the
standing in line, the thrusting-out of arms and legs at a signal, the
thud of feet stamping in constrained unison. The loss of individuality
seemed to me sheer disgrace. And when, as often happened, the
drill-sergeant rebuked me for some inefficiency as I stood in line, when
he addressed me as "Number Seven!" I burned with shame and rage. I was
no longer a human being; I had become part of a machine, and my name was
"Number Seven." It used to astonish me when I had a neighbour who went
through the drill with amusement, with zealous energy; I would gaze at
the boy, and ask myself how it was possible that he and I should feel so
differently. To be sure, nearly all my schoolfellows either enjoyed the
thing, or at all events went through it with indifference; they made
friends with the sergeant, and some were proud of walking with him "out
of bounds." Left, right! Left, right! For my own part, I think I have
never hated man as I hated that broad-shouldered, hard-visaged, brassy-
voiced fellow. Every word he spoke to me, I felt as an insult. Seeing
him in the distance, I have turned and fled, to escape the necessity of
saluting, and, still more, a quiver of the nerves which affected me so
painfully. If ever a man did me harm, it was he; harm physical and