There was a time when men thought that the reckless devil-may-care man made the finest soldier; that the hard drinker, the hard swearer, the riotous liver came out best in a fight. Wellington wrote of his "collection of ruffians" in the Peninsula: "It is impossible to describe to you the irregularities and excesses committed by the troops. We are an excellent army on parade, an excellent one to fight, but we are worse than an enemy in the country." How greatly times have changed since then!
Sir George White once said that recklessness and lawlessness will carry men a certain distance, but when men are half fed, when nights are wet and cold, and when nerves are broken down by shot and shell, then the lawless man disappears. It is when he is called upon to take the place of a comrade shot on a lonely picket that the man who has disciplined himself proves the true soldier.
General Nogi, who commanded the Japanese forces at Port Arthur, held the same view. His words may well be borne in mind at this time:
"Only he who has conquered himself in time of peace can aspire to be a fighting man under the Sun flag. The brilliant and faithful deeds of the soldier on the battle-field are nothing but the flowering and fruition of the work and training of his daily life in time of peace. A man whose life is in disorder in time of peace would have a rather difficult task if he tried to perform with correctness and success the duties of a true soldier on the field of battle."
If we carry these statements on to their issue, then surely the Christian soldier should fight best of all. He has not only the discipline and training of the Army, but moral discipline and training as well. And he has something more--the spiritual fact which dominates his being and transfigures and transforms him. To him death is not death, he lives and will live, and in the worst of all fiery furnaces there is always with him "the form of the fourth, like unto the Son of God."
Such men as these are unconquerable. They remind us of _Punch's_ famous cartoon, "Unconquerable"; for _Punch_ is not only a humorist, he is a preacher too.
_The Kaiser_: "So you see--you've lost everything."
_The King of the Belgians_: "Not my soul!"