Captain Wagstaffe offers no opinion, but darkly recommends us to order
pith helmets. However, we are rather suspicious of Captain Wagstaffe
these days. He suffers from an over-developed sense of humour.
The rank and file keep closer to earth in their prognostications. In
fact, some of them cleave to the dust. With them it is a case of hope
deferred. Quite half of them enlisted under the firm belief that
they would forthwith be furnished with a rifle and ammunition and
despatched to a vague place called "the front," there to take
pot-shots at the Kaiser. That was in early August. It is now early
April, and they are still here, performing monotonous evolutions and
chafing under the bonds of discipline. Small wonder that they have
begun to doubt, these simple souls, if they are ever going out at all.
Private M'Slattery put the general opinion in a nutshell.
"This regiment," he announced, "is no' for the front at all. We're
jist tae bide here, for tae be inspeckit by Chinese Ministers and
other heathen bodies!"
This withering summary of the situation was evoked by the fact that
we had once been called out, and kept on parade for two hours in
a north-east wind, for the edification of a bevy of spectacled
dignitaries from the Far East. For the Scottish, artisan the word
"minister," however, has only one significance; so it is probable that
M'Slattery's strictures were occasioned by sectarian, rather than
racial, prejudice.
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