That this is so is shown even more strikingly by the fact to which the two other writers just quoted point with so much complacency. This fact is the soldier’s undoubted willingness to pursue his calling for pay which seems strikingly incommensurate with his risks. His conduct in this respect is, no doubt, remarkable, especially when compared with that of men in the domain of peaceful industry. When any industrial occupation is in question a workman will expect special wages if it is one which presents a likelihood of his often hurting his thumb; but soldiers will risk the probability of being tortured and blown to pieces for wages which would hardly induce a peasant to hoe a turnip-field. This is no indication of any abnormal poverty amongst the classes from whom the army is mainly recruited, for the same phenomenon is constantly observable amongst men who are not under the necessity of working for their living at all. Amongst such men are numbers who in time of actual war will eagerly give up a life of leisure and luxury for the certainty of hardship and the probability of death—men who for the sake of anything else but fighting would hardly, without a struggle, run the risk of a bad dinner. But what these facts really suggest to us is not the insane conclusion that because soldiers act differently from other men, other men may be counted on to act like soldiers. On the contrary, what they suggest is the question {302} why men will do as soldiers what no one will do in any other capacity, and what soldiers themselves will cease to do as soon as they become commissionaires.