Page:French life in town and country (1917).djvu/124

 can punish is at least twenty times greater than that of those who can reward, nearly everything that happens is disagreeable. In fact, rewards are unknown. To show a curious example: leave of absence is not a reward; the privation of it is a punishment. A soldier's paradise is outside the barracks. Offer him fifteen days of prison and after that fifteen days' furlough, and he will not hesitate. What the corporal and sergeant wish to avoid is being bored, and so, to get out of work, they punish and govern by the terror they inspire. The men do not wash their clothes because they should be washed, but from fear the sergeant should find them dirty. The idea of duty does not exist in the army; it is the kingdom of fear, into which no ray of hope or justice penetrates."

I have left these notes of a young French soldier in their original English, with hardly an alteration. This is one of the anecdotes concerning military denseness he sends me: "In the town where my regiment was quartered there was an exhibition, and the directors of the exhibition, knowing how light a soldier's purse is (a soldier's purse is one of the most remarkable things I ever saw. It contains everything: thread, needles, pins, nails, white and black wax, buttons of six or seven sorts; but if you wish to dig so far as to find money, you are as likely as not to reach the ground), wrote to the colonel