And I fancy you will find very,
very few who would not go on active service if they could. On the
occasions when we have had calls for overseas volunteers, the response
has always exceeded the demand. The people who, looking at a party of
hospital orderlies, remark--it sounds incredible, but there _are_ people
who make the remark--"These fellows should be out at the front," may
further be reminded that "these fellows" now have no say in the choice
of their own whereabouts. Not a soldier in the land can decide where or
how he shall serve. That small matter is not for him, but for the
authorities. He may be thirsting for the gore of Brother Boche, and an
inexorable fate condemns him to scrub the gore of Brother Briton off the
tiles of the operating theatre. He may (but I never met one who did)
elect to sit snugly on a stool at a desk filling-in army forms or
conducting a card index; and lo, at a whisper from some unseen Nabob in
the War Office, he finds himself hooked willy-nilly off his stool and
dumped into the Rifle Brigade. This is what it means to be in khaki, and
it is hardly the place of persons not in khaki to bandy sneers about the
comfortableness of the Linseed Lancers whose initials, when not standing
for Rob All My Comrades, can be interpreted to mean Run Away, Matron's
Coming.
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