There ain't better stuff to make soldiers out of nowhere than Englishmen, God bless 'em! But they're badgered, they're horribly badgered; and that's why the service don't take over there, let alone the way the country grudge 'em every bit of pay.

In England you go in the ranks--well, they all just tell you you're a blackguard, and there's the lash, and you'd better behave yourself or you'll get it hot and hot; they take for granted you're a bad lot or you wouldn't be there, and in course you're riled and go to the bad according, seeing that it's what's expected of you.

Here, contrariwise, you come in the ranks and get a welcome, and feel that it just rests with yourself whether you won't be a fine fellow or not; and just along of feeling that you're pricked to show the best metal you're made on, and not to let nobody else beat you out of the race, like.

Ah! it makes a wonderful difference to a fellow--a wonderful difference--whether the service he's come into look at him as a scamp that never will be nothing but a scamp, or as a rascal that's maybe got in him, all rascal though he is, the pluck to turn into a hero.

And that's just the difference, sir, that France has found out, and England hasn't--God bless her, all the same!" With which the soldier whom England had turned adrift, and France had won in her stead, concluded his long oration by dropping on his knees to refill his Corporal's pipe.
"An army's just a machine, sir, in course," he concluded, as he rammed in the Turkish tobacco.