and make up his mind that it is his bounden duty to do all he can for the country that gave him birth. Most of the old boys at Greenwich Hospital, and Chelsea College, who have lost an arm or a leg, or are otherwise injured, would heartily join in this sentiment, though they somehow seem to think fighting, and their country’s good, the same thing.”
“When a soldier is wounded, no doubt he tries to comfort himself with the honour he has got in the battle?”
“O boys! boys! ‘Will honour take away the grief of a wound?’ A soldier had need have something better to support him than the mere love of glory: he ought to have the consolation of knowing that he has fought in a just cause, and that it is his country’s good, and not his own that he aims at. In my time, perhaps, I have run after the bubble glory as ardently as the boy pursues his butterfly; but there are seasons—I speak from experience—when the heart of a soldier is sick of war; and then he muses and moralizes like other men. When, harassed, day after day, and night after night, when, bivouacing on the cold ground, or watching by the dying embers of the camp-fire, and, especially, when lying among the wounded on the battle-field, he sees friends and foes around him who have been swept down by the sharp scythe of war, he yearns for the calm quiet, the soothing peacefulness of a happy home, where the wasting sword of battle is unknown; and then, like others, he can break out in ardent exclamations against mad ambition, questioning the value of mere glory, and even doubting the lawfulness of making earthly honours an object of his desires.
‘O glory! glory! Mighty one on earth!
How justly imaged by the waterfall!
So wild and furious in thy sparkling birth,
Dashing thy torrents down, and dazzling all;
Sublimely breaking from thy glorious height,
Majestic, thundering, beautiful, and bright.
‘Oh! what is human glory, human pride?