A GARDEN DIARY 139 
things in the world, of Zxvaszon, moved thereto, 
partly by the desire which assails us at all times, 
of dilating upon what one knows least, partly 
by the equally inborn desire of running counter 
to conventions upon which one has been brought 
up, and which have been instilled into one’s 
mind ever since one could walk unaided. 
That the difference between soldiers and 
civilians is an absolute difference, clear as glass, 
hard as adamant, is one of those conventions. 
Until the other day I never remember hearing 
it so much as questioned. Yet how does that 
fact now stand in the face of all that we 
have been hearing, seeing, reading about, during 
the last five months? If one thing more than 
another has been brought home to us by this 
present struggle it is that under modern con- 
ditions a civilian—without the slightest preten- 
sions to be anything else, so long only as he 
is a good marksman—is not only as valuable, 
but under many circumstances, far move valuable 
than the average soldier, who as a rule can just 
shoot, and nothing more, who has all the finer 
parts of his art still to learn, and is not at all 
likely to learn it when he has no more leisurely 
target to practise upon than the living man. 
It is upon the strength of this revolution 
that I have been indulging this morning in a 
private Invasion of my own, specially designed 
for the exaltation of the rifle-shooting civilian, in 
