The discipline of habit is what we soldiers had before the war, and that takes time. Now it must be the discipline of intelligence, of ideal. And for that fear is the worst conceivable teacher. We have no time to form habits now; the routine of the army is of too short duration before the test comes. And the test is too crushing....
The bed-rock now as then is the same, only the methods of getting down to that bed-rock have to be more hurried. Of old habitude and constant association instilled a religion—the religion of obedience, the religion of esprit de corps. But it took time. Now we need the same religion, but we haven't the same time.
In the office next door the Sergeant-Major was speaking soft words to the Pay Corporal.
"Blimey, I dunno what's come over the bloke. You know that there Meyrick..."
"Who, the Slug?" interpolated the other.
"Yes. Well 'e come shambling on to parade this morning with 'is puttees flapping round his ankles—late as usual; and 'e told me to run 'im up to office." A thumb indicated the Major next door. "When I gets 'im there, instead of giving 'im three days C.B. and being done with it, 'e starts a lot of jaw about motives and discipline. 'E hadn't got no ruddy excuse; said 'e was a'reading Kipling, or some such rot—when 'e ought to have been 'elping the cook's mate."
"What did he give him?" asked the Pay Corporal, interested.
"Nothing. His blessing and dismissed the case. As if I had nothing better to do than listen to 'im talking 'ot air to a perisher like that there Meyrick. 'Ere, pass over them musketry returns."
Which conversation, had Seymour overheard it, he would have understood and fully sympathised with. For C.-S.-M. Hayton, though a prince of sergeant-majors, was no student of physiology. To him a spade was a spade only as long as it shovelled earth.