chafed and infuriated me. I compared it to a ritualistic religion, a
religion of authority only, which depended not on individual assent
but on tradition for its sanctions. I loathed militarism in all its
forms. Now ... well, I am inclined to reconsider my judgment. Seeing
the end of military discipline, has shown me something of its ethical
meaning--more than that, of its spiritual meaning.

For though the part of the "great push" that it fell to my lot to see
was not a successful part, it was none the less a triumph--a spiritual
triumph. From the accounts of the ordinary war correspondent I think
one hardly realizes how great a spiritual triumph it was. For the war
correspondent only sees the outside, and can only describe the outside
of things. We who are in the Army, who know the men as individuals,
who have talked with them, joked with them, censored their letters,
worked with them, lived with them we see below the surface.

The war correspondent sees the faces of the men as they march towards
the Valley of the Shadow, sees the steadiness of eye and mouth,
hears the cheery jest. He sees them advance into the Valley without
flinching. He sees some of them return, tired, dirty, strained, but
still with a quip for the passer-by. He gives us a picture of men
without nerves, without sensitiveness, without imagination, schooled
to face death as they would face rain or any trivial incident of
everyday life. The "Tommy" of the war correspondent is not a human
being, but a lay figure with a gift for repartee, little more than
the manikin that we thought him in those far-off days before the war,
when we watched him drilling on the barrack square. We soldiers know
better. 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