The chaplain fears that he will faint and become a hindrance instead of a help when he first sees blood and torn limbs in the dressing station; and the recruit is afraid of being afraid in the hour of battle and of bringing dishonor and weakness upon his regiment. He will be glad when the trial is over--when he knows the stuff of which nature has made him. A friend of mine told me one day that he was walking over a heavily shelled field with a young aristocrat of a highly strung temperament. The man was afraid, but would not yield to his fear. His lips twitched and his face became drawn and white. His movements were jerky but he made no other sign. He talked about paltry things in which, at the moment, he had not the slightest interest, and passed jocular or sardonic remarks about the things that were happening around them. My friend ducked his head when a shell burst near as we all have done often enough, but the young aristocrat kept his head as high and stiff as if he were being crowned. He held it up defiantly; was it not filled with the bluest blood of England? The shells might blow it off if they liked. That was their concern, not his, but they should never make him bow. His fathers had fought on British battlefields for centuries, and had never bowed their heads to a foe, and he would not break the great tradition. Shells might break his neck but they should never bend it. He would face the enemy with as stiff an upper-lip and as stiff a neck as ever his fathers did. He knew his personal weakness and reinforced his strength with that of his fathers’. He was not afraid of death. He was afraid of being afraid. My friend was a coachman’s son who by courage and capacity of the highest order had won a commission. He had no traditions either to haunt or help him, and he had often been tried in the fire and knew his strength. He was not afraid of being afraid. It was natural to duck when a shell burst near and it did him no harm and made no difference to the performance of his duties; so he ducked as he felt inclined, and then laughed at his nerves for the tricks they were allowing the shells to play on them. But, knowing his companion’s more sensitive nature and temperamental weakness, he was immensely impressed by his stiff neck and proudly erect head. He showed a self-control which only centuries of breeding could give. Here was a hero indeed. The shells he was defying were as nothing to the fears which haunted his imaginative nature and which, with his back to the wall of his family traditions, he was fighting and keeping at bay. My friend could not refrain from complimenting him on resisting the natural tendency to duck the head when a shell screamed above them. "Eton boys never duck," replied the young aristocrat.