And he was only one of many, was "Nobby" Clarke. There was Bennett, the tramp, who was always ready with a song to cheer up the weary on the march; there was a Jewish money-lender who was killed while trying to save a man who was lying wounded in No Man's Land; there was Phillips, who had been convicted of manslaughter--he became a stretcher-bearer, and was known all over the battalion for his care of the wounded. In every regiment in every army you will find a little group of men who were tramps and beggars and thieves, and, almost without exception, they have "made good." For the first time in their lives they have been accepted as members of great society, and not driven away as outcasts. The Army has welcomed them, disciplined them, and taught them the elements of self-respect--a quality whose very existence they ignored before the war. There is an Italian proverb--"Tutto il mondo e paese"--which means, in its broadest sense, "All the world is ruled by the same passion and qualities." In the old days it needed a Dickens, and, later, a Neil Lyons to discover the qualities of the criminal classes; now war has brought us all together--the erstwhile city merchant warms himself before the same brazier as the man who would have picked his pocket three years before--and we suddenly find that we are no better than the beggar, and that a man who stole apples from a stall is no worse at heart than the inhabitant of Mayfair. It is not that our ideas of greatness have degenerated when we call these men heroes; it is not that war is entirely a thing of evil, so that the criminal shines as a warrior--it is that these "outcasts" have changed. Statistics prove that crime has decreased since the war began, and crime will continue to decrease, for that indefinable instinct we call patriotism has seized on all classes alike, so that the criminal can make the supreme sacrifice just as magnificently as the man who has "kept straight" all his life. And the best of it is that this reform among burglars and beggars is not for the "duration of the war only." War has lost us our sons and our fathers, it has brought appalling sorrow and suffering into the world, but it has given the very poor a chance they have never had before. No more are they outcasts; they are members of society, and such they will remain. If this were all the good that war could do, it would still be our ultimate gain that the great scourge is passing over the world. XIX "PONGO" SIMPSON ON OFFICERS