"It is; I have wondered over it many a time. All savage races love fighting, and certainly our own people do. If there were a great war, hundreds and thousands of men would volunteer at once. I am afraid this instinct brings us very near the savage. I think no other nation possesses it to anything like the same extent as the British race. The Germans are fine soldiers and fight well, but they do it purely because they are commanded and have to obey. The Frenchmen are nearly the same, and I think it is something like this with the Russians. The Turk, now, is a thorough good fighter, and with him it is a matter of religious fanaticism. It is curious that our Indian subjects, for the most part, go into battle with the same feelings as do our own people. There are no finer fighters in the world than the Sikhs, the Punjaubis, and the Ghoorkhas. They are all magnificent, but are equalled in Africa by the Hausas and other tribes from whom we draw our soldiers. All these people go into a fray as if they were going to a feast." "I expect," Nita said, "it is because we have that feeling that we always win our battles." "No doubt that is so, and I only hope that the feeling will not be knocked out of us by school-boards and other contrivances of that sort." Nita shook her head. This was beyond her. "Why should it do so?" she asked. "The school-board trains up the boys to despise their fathers' callings. I am afraid they all want to go into shops, or to get some small clerkship, and to struggle, in fact, for anything where they can wear black clothes instead of fustian. Still, I hope they won't lose the courage that our race has always possessed. At any rate a very large number of young fellows who have been to board schools become Volunteers afterwards, and I thoroughly believe that the Volunteers would turn out as one man if we had a very serious war, say, with France or Germany." "That would be a serious war," Nita said. "Those nations have tremendous armies, so I have heard my father say."