Atkins, no matter from what class he is recruited, is immortal, and
that we British are one of the most military nations in the world. I
have learned to love my new life, obey my officers, and depend upon
my rifle; for I am Rifleman Patrick MacGill of the Irish Rifles, where
rumour has it that the Colonel and I are the only two _real_ Irishmen
in the battalion. It should be remembered that a unit of a rifle
regiment is known as rifleman, not private; we like the term rifleman,
and feel justly indignant when a wrong appellation plays skittles with
our rank.

The earlier stages of our training took place at Chelsea and the White
City, where untiring instructors strove to convince us that we were
about the most futile lot of "rookies" that it had ever been their
misfortune to encounter. It was not until we were unceremoniously
dumped amidst the peaceful inhabitants of a city that slumbers in the
shadow of an ancient cathedral that I felt I was in reality a soldier.

Here we were to learn that there is no novelty so great for the newly
enlisted soldier as that of being billeted, in the process of which he
finds himself left upon an unfamiliar door-step like somebody else's
washing. He is the instrument by which the War Office disproves that
"an Englishman's home is his castle." He has the law behind him;
but nothing else--save his own capacity for making friends with his
victims.

If the equanimity of English householders who are about to have
soldiers billeted upon them is a test of patriotism, there may well be
some doubts about the patriotic spirit of the English middle class in
the present crisis. The poor people welcome to their homes soldiers
who in most cases belong to the same strata of society as themselves;