You may send forth
your volunteer, with all the pomp and circumstance of war, and greet his
return with all enthusiasm of welcome; you may make him the hero of
paragraph and tale (I believe it is treasonable to choose any other
_jeune premier_ for a love story just now); you may put a flag into his
hand, more riddled and shot-torn than any of our old Peninsular
standards; you may salute him "veteran," a month after the first baptism
of fire; but the savor of the conscript and the citizen will cling to
him still.
What would you have? The _esprit de corps_, which has more or less been
kept alive in civilized armies since the days of the Tenth Legion, is,
perforce, wanting here. All military organization is posterior to the
War of Independence. It is certainly not their fault if even the regular
battalions can inscribe on their colors no nobler name than that of some
desultory Mexican or Border battle. If Australia should become an
empire, she must carry the same blank ensigns without shame. But when a
regiment has no traditionary honors to guard, it lacks a powerful
deterrent from self-disgrace.
It is easy to deride martinets and pipe-clay: all the drill in
Christendom will not make a good soldier out of a weakling or a coward;
but, unless you can turn men into machines, so far as to make them act
independently of individual thought or volition, you can never depend on
a body of non-fatalists for advancing steadily, irrespective of what may
be in their front; nor for keeping their ranks unbroken under a hail of
fire, or on a sinking, ship.
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