to crush out the spirit of the men to such a point that a commanding officer might cheerfully prepare for the slaughter of a quarter of a million men. He does not analyze the corruption which comes with undeserved authority, perhaps because he never became a sergeant himself and never saw the sickening spectacle of men who had tried to bully him before come cringing for his favour. The Guards regiments made their promotions slowly; by his own account Mr. Graham was the only man in his battalion who might have qualified for a commission. Authority, therefore, was permanent and its symbol was brutality.
"I used to think courage and verve and human idealism made the real driving power of the army in time of war. . . . The real driving power lay in brutal thought and word and act. The open sesame of the army was the characteristic of brutality. . . . That the driving power of the army arose from courage and voluntary sacrifice
was the first illusion to fall. The second was that of chivalry. . . . The regimental tone absolutely forbade admiration of anything in connection with Germans."
Graham recounts at least one instance in which leave was given by a commanding officer to shoot prisoners ("to avenge my brother's death," said the sergeant who asked the privilege) and gives it as the common experience of all soldiers that they are trained to kill the wounded. Thus:
"'The second bayonet man kills the wounded.'
"'The army provides you with a good pair of boots; you how to use them.'
"'At this point the Germans come out of the machine gun nest holding up their hands, and the man with the Lewis gun forgets to take his fingers off the trigger.'"
To this let Mr. Graham write his own epilogue:
"As yet they remember all too well the brutal aspects of it all, the cruelty and sordidness, the petty tyranny and the impurity, but the time will come for many when, recalling the way and the march and the Spirit in the midst, they will ask of us old war-comrades as did
