if it does not "run in blood down palace walls," must often exhale from
lips tremulous with hushed profanity. One bright, hot morning of
mid-July the suffering from that cruel folly in the men of a regiment
marching from their barracks to Buckingham Palace and sweltering under
those shaggy cliffs was evident in their distorted eyes, streaming
cheeks, and panting mouths. But why do I select the bear-skin cap as
peculiarly cruel and foolish, merely because it is archaic? All war and
all the images of it are cruel and foolish.

The April morning, however, when I first carried out my sensitized
surfaces for the impression which I hoped to receive from a certain
historic spectacle was very different. There was even a suggestion of
comfort in the archaic bear-skins; they were worn, and they had been
worn, every day for nearly two hundred years, as part of the ceremonial
of changing the regimental colors before Buckingham Palace. I will not
be asked why this is imperative; it has always been done and probably
always will be done, and to most civilian onlookers will remain as
unintelligible in detail as it was to me. When the regiment was drawn up
under the palace windows, a part detached itself from the main body and
went off to a gate of the palace, and continued mysteriously stationary
there. In the mean time the ranks left behind closed or separated amid
the shouting of sergeants or corporals, and the men relieved themselves
of the strain from their knapsacks, or satisfied an exacting military
ideal, by hopping at will into the air and bouncing their knapsacks,
dragging lower down, up to the napes of their necks, where they rested
under the very fringe of their bear-skin caps. A couple of officers,
with swords drawn, walked up and down behind the ranks, but, though they
were tall, fine fellows, and expressed in the nonchalant fulfilment of
their part a high sense of boredom, they did not give the scene any such
poignant interest as it had from the men in performing a duty, or