We are marching to a life and death conflict in which we take it for granted that every man in our command will live up to the most heroic standards, yet to-day at noon we held office. The prisoners were marched in under escort, their heads bare and their arms held flatly to their sides. Most of the charges against them were paltry. This man had been caught with his candle burning after lights out had sounded; the next had been late upon early morning parade; the next had lost his box-respirator—he said it had been stolen; the next had been found riding on an ammunition-wagon after the order had been passed down the column for the gunners to dismount. Not one of the offences alleged amounted to more than a misdemeanour, yet these men who are the picked storm-troops of the British Armies and whom we expect to face the shambles without flinching within the next few days, upholding the best traditions of the Empire, were marched hatless under an armed guard through the village street, with all the French girls staring at them. Some of them escaped punishment—some were awarded extra fatigues, pack-drill, additional pickets; many of them will be dead before their sentences have been served. We ask too much when we treat them as feudal slaves and expect them to act like crusaders. Four years ago they were freemen—professional men, prairie-farmers, ranchers, lumber-jacks, surveyors. They willfully forewent their liberty that an ideal might conquer. It is the fact that they were freemen in the truest sense that makes them fight so bravely. They were men accustomed to take risks, to stand upon two legs and confront Nature unafraid. We may treat them as schoolboys, but it is their triumphant manhood that gives them their dash and splendid self-reliance up front. In other words, we try to crush the very spirit by our discipline which makes us victorious in battle. It seems strange that, knowing this to be the case, we should persist in governing them as people possessed of no intelligence.