In the camp I marched with the others for several hours each day and in the evening went with some other young soldier for a walk in the wood or in the streets of a southern city. There was a kind of drunkenness of comradeship. So many men so like oneself, doing the same thing with oneself. As for the officers--well, it was to be admitted that in military affairs they knew more than ourselves but there their superiority ended. It would be just as well for none of them to attempt to put on too much side when we were not drilling or were not on actual military duty. The war would soon be over and after a time we would all be going back home. An officer might conceivably “get away” with some sort of injustice for the moment--but a year from now, when we were all at home again.... Did the fool want to take the chance of four or five huskies giving him a beating some night in an alleyway? The constant marching and manœuvring was a kind of music in the legs and bodies of men. No man is a single thing, physical or mental. The marching went on and on. The physical ruled. There was a vast slow rhythm, out of the bodies of many thousands of men, always going on and on. It got into one’s body. There was a kind of physical drunkenness produced. He who weakened was laughed at by his comrades and the weakness went away or he disappeared. One was afloat on a vast sea of men. There was a kind of music on the surface of the sea. The music was a part of oneself. One was oneself a part of the music. One’s body, moving in rhythm with all these other bodies, made the music. What was an officer? What was a man? An officer was but one out of whose throat came a voice. The army moved across a great open field. One’s body was tired but happy with an odd new kind of happiness. The mind did not torture the body, asking questions. The body was moved by a power outside itself and as for the fancy, it played freely, far, freely and widely, over oceans, over mountain tops too. Beyond him not the ghost of shores, Beyond him only shoreless seas. And now the voice and the words, caught up and repeated by other voices, harsh voices, tired voices, thin high pitched voices. Fours right into line-- Fours right into line. * * * * *