And it means a lot.  Of what use is even courage itself if it goes with impatience and a flash in the pan endurance?  This quality of cheerfulness is really the quality that outlasts all others.  It means not only that you have an army in good fighting trim to-day, but that this time next year, or the year after, you will still have an army in good fighting trim.  In the long-run it wears down all opposition, but it is not a characteristic you notice at first.  Gradually it makes itself felt, and gradually it governs your estimate of the whole army.  And then the peculiar wickedness of Tommy (a child’s naughtiness for superficiality) ceases to offend you so much.  Rather your own regulation code seems a trifle less important than it did.  Let’s all lie and steal; what does it signify?  I would lie and steal till the crack of doom to gain the serene endurance of the British soldier.[1]

Of his courage one need scarcely speak.  It is a subject on which a great deal of rubbish has been talked.  It is not true that all soldiers are brave, nor is it true that even brave soldiers will go anywhere and do anything.  On the other hand, it certainly is true that our soldiers’ courage—­that is, their apparent unconsciousness of danger—­strikes one as very remarkable.  You need not believe more about the light of battle and the warrior’s lust, and all that sort of thing, than you want to.  There is very little excitement in a modern battle, and the English soldier is not an excitable man, but this only makes the display of courage more striking.  Nothing can be more terrible than one of our slow charges, a charge in which all the peril which used to be compressed into a hundred yards’ rush in hot blood is spread out over an afternoon’s walk.  I am sure any man who has ever taken part in one of those ghastly processions, and, at thirty yards interval, watched the dust-spots, at first promiscuous, gradually concentrating round him, and listened to the constant soft whine or nearer hiss of passing bullets, and seen men fall and plodded on still, solitary, waiting his turn, would look upon the maddest and bloodiest rush of old days as a positive luxury by comparison.

What I think about our soldiers’ courage is that it is of such a sort that it takes very little out of them.  One of the foreign officers on Lord Roberts’ staff, in a criticism in one of his own papers, has written that the English infantry, more than any he knows, has the knack of fighting and marching and keeping on at it, day after day, without getting stale or suffering from any reaction.  The fact is, our Tommies go into a fight with much the same indifferent good-humour that they do everything else with.  Towards the end of each day’s march the soldiers all begin to look out for firewood, and if at that time you knock up against the enemy, you may see our infantry advancing to the attack with big logs tied to their backs and sticking up over their heads.  Though it encumbers and bothers them and makes them much more conspicuous, not a Tommy will abandon his wood.  Supper is a reality.  The thought of being shot does not bother him.  Men who fight like this can fight every day.