court-martial no Prosecutor ever "presses" the charge; he may even
alleviate it. Which shows that Assizes and Sessions have something to
learn from courts-martial. The case was simple. Prisoner had gone out on
the night of the 3rd with a patrol commanded by a subaltern. An alarm
was raised, and he and the greater part of the patrol had run back to
the trenches, leaving the officer to stand his ground and to return
later with his left arm shattered by a German bullet.

All this Stokes remembered but too well, though it seemed to have
happened an immense time ago. He remembered how the subaltern had warned
him that the only thing to do when a German flare lit up the night was
to stand quite still. And he had not stood still, for one of the most
difficult things for a man to believe is that to see suddenly is not the
same thing as being seen; he had ducked, and as he moved something
seared his right cheek like red-hot iron, and then--but why recall that
shameful moment? A paradoxical psychologist in a learned essay on "the
Expression of Emotion" has argued gravely that the "expression" precedes
the emotion, that a man doesn't run because he is afraid but is afraid
because he runs. Sergeant Stokes had never heard of psychology, but to
this day he believes that it was his first start that was his undoing.
He had begun to run without knowing why, until he knew why he ran--he
was afraid. Yes, that was it. He had had, in Army vernacular, "cold
feet." But why he ran in the first instance he did not know. It was true
he hadn't slept for nearly three weeks, and that his duty as N.C.O. to
go round every half-hour during the night to watch the men and stare at
that inscrutable field, and to post and relieve, had made him very
jumpy. And then a young subaltern had died in his arms the day before
that fatal night--he could see the grey film glistening on his face like
a clouded glass. How queer he had felt afterwards. But what had that to
do with the charge? Nothing at all.