But the much-resented claim to a superiority in the matter of honour is well founded, and no amount of philosophising or political-economising will ever shake it. Clearly it is more honourable for a man to risk his life, and what is infinitely more important--his reputation and his whole future career--in defence of his country, than it is merely to build up a competency or a fortune. The soldier's profession is beset by other and greater dangers than the physical. Money-making pursuits are not only safer for the skin, but in them a blunder, or even a series of blunders, does not banish the hope of ultimate success. The man of business has chances of retrieving his position. Many bankrupts have died in affluence. In politics, a man with a plausible tongue and a certain quality of courage, will usually succeed in eluding the consequences of his mistakes, by laying the blame on other people's shoulders. But the soldier is rarely given a second chance; and he may easily come down at the first chance, through sheer ill-luck, and not through any fault of his own. Such a profession confers honour upon its members. Law, trade, and finance are not in themselves, as was at one time thought, dishonourable pursuits; but neither are they in themselves honourable. They are neither the one nor the other. It casts no slur upon a man to be a lawyer, a tradesman, or a banker; {406} but neither does it confer upon him any honour. But military service does confer an honour. The devotion, hardship, and danger of the soldier's life are not rewarded upon a commercial basis, or reckoned in that currency. Some people are inclined to mock at the respect--exaggerated as they think--which is paid by conscript countries to their armies. For all its excesses and absurdities, this respect is founded upon a true principle--a truer principle of conduct than our own. In countries where most of the able-bodied men have given some years of their lives gratuitously to the service of their country, the fact is brought home to them, that such service is of a different character from the benefits which they subsequently confer upon the State by their industry and thrift, or by growing rich. [Sidenote: A THEORY OF BRITISH FREEDOM]