If you despise other boys because they belong to a poorer class than yourself you are a snob; if you hate other boys because they happen to be born richer and belong to higher class schools than yourself, you are a fool.
We have got, each one of us, to take our place as we find it in this world and make the best of it, and pull together with the others around us.
We are very like bricks in a wall, we have each our place, though it may seem a small one in so big a wall. But if one brick gets rotten, or slips out of place, it begins to throw an undue strain on others, cracks appear, and the wall totters.
Don't be too anxious to push yourself on to good billets. You will get disappointments without end if you start that way.
Work for the good of the State, or of the business in which you are employed, and you will find that as you succeed in doing this you will be getting all the promotion and all the success that you want.
Try and prepare yourself for this by seriously taking up the subjects they teach you at school, not because it amuses you, but because it is your duty to your country to improve yourself. Take up your mathematics, your history, and your language—learning in that spirit, and you'll get on.
Don't think of yourself, but think of your country and your employers. Self-sacrifice pays all round.
DUTIES AS CITIZEN-SOLDIER.
A cuttle-fish is an animal with a small, round body and several enormously long arms which reach out in every direction to hold on to rocks to enable it to keep its position and to get food.
Great Britain has been compared to a cuttle-fish, the British Isles being the body and our distant Colonies the arms spread all over the world.