But whatever may have been the
case before the war, all the armies of Europe are now alike in this,
that they are composed of civilians who merely happen to have adopted a
certain garb for the performance of a certain job--and, be it remarked,
a temporary job. That garb has not reduced the citizens, who have the
honour to wear it, to a monotonous level either of intelligence or of
conduct: nor even of opinions about the war itself. I have had
fire-eaters in my ward who breathed the sentiments of _John Bull_ and
the _Evening News_, and I have had pacifists (they seemed to have fought
no less bravely) who, week by week, read and approved Mr. Snowden in the
_Labour Leader_; I have had Radicals and Tories, and patients who cared
for neither party, but whose passion was cage-birds or boxing or amateur
photography; I have had patients who were sulky and patients who were
bright, patients who were unlettered and patients who were educated,
patients who could hardly express themselves without the use of an
ensanguined vocabulary and patients who were gently spoken and
fastidious. Each of them was Tommy Atkins--the inanely smirking hero of
the picture-paper and the funny paragraph.
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