THE SOLDIER'S CASE EXCEPTIONAL 301 



willingness to risk it cutting trousers, and is for Book iv 

 certain reasons a phenomenon standing by itself. 



That this is so is shown even more strikingly 

 by the fact to which the two other writers just and we cannot 



i . . -i i r-r-,1 . r argue from it 



quoted point with so much complacency. 1 his fact to the work of 

 is the soldier's undoubted willingness to pursue or 

 his calling for pay which seems strikingly incom- 

 mensurate with his risks. His conduct in this 

 respect is, no doubt, remarkable, especially when 

 compared with that of men in the domain of peace- 

 ful industry. When any industrial occupation is 

 in question a workman will expect special wages 

 if it is one which presents a likelihood of his often 

 hurting his thumb ; but soldiers will risk the prob- 

 ability of being tortured and blown to pieces for 

 wages which would hardly induce a peasant to hoe a 

 turnip-field. This is no indication of any abnormal 

 poverty amongst the classes from whom the army is 

 mainly recruited, for the same phenomenon is con- 

 stantly observable amongst men who are not under 

 the necessity of working for their living at all. 

 Amongst such men are numbers who in time of 

 actual war will eagerly give up a life of leisure and 

 luxury for the certainty of hardship and the prob- 

 ability of death men who for the sake of anything 

 else but fighting would hardly, without a struggle, 

 run the risk of a bad dinner. But what these facts 

 really suggest to us is not the insane conclusion 

 that because soldiers act differently from other men, 

 other men may be counted on to act like soldiers. 

 On the contrary, what they suggest is the question 



