More than that, a uniform is like a flag. It represents the empire. Each nation has its own flag and its own uniform, and wherever its soldiers go, they carry, so to speak, their country with them.
If they are bad, they dishonour their flag and bring disgrace on their colours and the uniform.
One of the greatest motives behind the men in the war was "the honour of the company or the regiment or the battalion or the brigade."
One company lost a trench and were heartsick with depression, and when the time came, half dead with weariness and hunger and thirst, they retook it and were happy because they had saved the honour of the company. The uniform means that.
A bad man or a coward not only hurts himself, but he brings disgrace on the company. Every deed of evil or cowardice comes back on the flag and the country to which the man belongs who wears its uniform.
The uniform speaks to the soldier of duty—it makes duty easier. In New York the street sweepers were clad in a white uniform and they say every man felt a little bigger and better and more anxious to do better work because of the uniform.
A boy in the Trail Rangers or the Boy Scouts can't help feeling the influence of his uniform.
A mother told me about her daughter, a Girl Guide, doing something wrong in school one day when she had on the uniform. The mother said, "Oh, daughter, you did not do it with the uniform on, did you?" And it nearly broke the child's heart.
You can't do things in uniform you might do in plain clothes. It makes you a member of a league of honour, in spite of yourself. It bucks a fellow up and sort of puts him on his honour. It says, "Here, you are not your own now. You belong as you never did before to your country, and your country is counting on you." A chap can hardly go back on that!
The uniform proclaims loyalty too.