“In the early ‘fifties,” said the general, “our European troops serving in India were not in good case. In those days they were constantly quartered in the plains, the barracks were dismal, pestilential, thatched sheds, there were none of the comforts the soldier now enjoys, and in the dismal ennui his only resources were his canteen and the bazaar. The revulsion from the stir and variety of marching and fighting, superinduced widespread discontent, and in many instances depression intensified into actual despair. Quite an epidemic of suicide set in, and was but partially cured by Sir Charles Napier’s very Irish expedient of sentencing a man to be shot who had unsuccessfully attempted to take his own life. At this time transportation to West Australia was the usual punishment in the army for the military crime of grave insubordination. So low had sunk the morale of too many of the rank and file, and so ardent was the desire for change of any kind, no matter what or where, that men deliberately laid themselves out to earn the punishment of transportation. This was not a difficult task. The soldier had only to make a blow at his superior officer--and all above him from a lance-corporal to the colonel were his superior officers--or even to throw a cap or a glove at him, to have himself charged with the offence of mutinous conduct. The _pro forma_ court-martial sat; the soldier pleaded guilty; the sentence of transportation was duly ‘approved and confirmed,’ and presently the man was blithely on his voyage to join a chain gang at Perth or Freemantle. “This state of things was too injurious to the service to be allowed a long continuance. The Commander-in-Chief promulgated a trenchant order, denouncing in strong terms the utter subversion of discipline that seemed impending, and sternly intimating that death, and not transportation any more, should in future be the unfailing penalty for the crime of using or offering violence to a superior officer. The order was read aloud at the head of every regiment in India, but its purport did not seriously impress the troops. The men were fain to regard it in the light of what the Germans call a stroke on the water, and they did not believe that it would be actually put in force. They did not know the nature of Sir Charles Napier.