The firing-line is a strange place. There are few situations in life where a man is called upon to hold himself permanently in check. There are emergencies in civil life where a man must subordinate his feelings to a higher interest, but only in war is he compelled to make the perpetual sacrifice of his feelings, to face again and again an ordeal which perhaps never loses its terrors for him. Do you realize the weight of responsibility resting on the shoulders of the Regimental Officer in war? Here is a situation he is frequently called upon to face. A shell falls right into the midst of his platoon as he is leading his men to or from the trenches. Maybe the men are fresh from home, and this sudden horror that cleaves its bloody path through their ranks is their first taste of war. There is one man in that platoon who must not lose his head. That is the officer, boy though he be. Those raw and mangled corpses, those groaning, whimpering men that strew the ground, may affright the rank and file; they may make no visible impression on him. In his hands repose the lives of a couple of hundred men. He owes them not only to those men themselves, but to the State. He must maintain his calm, so that the men shall come to see with him that this is but a common incident of war; he must decide whether to put the men under cover or to march straight on; he must collect the survivors, and form them up again; he must, in short, take command for the moment, not only of his own feelings, but of those of his men as well. Though a senseless terror, which highly strung men who come under shell-fire for the first time know all too well, creep over him, he must not show it. He must play the veteran, though the heavens fall in. The whole relationship between officer and man in our army is based on incidents like these. To get the best out of his men, an officer must show them that he does not fear to do what he demands of them. Seldom, if ever, is a stout-hearted officer “let down.” His example endures, even after he is gone. More than once, I am sure, the souls of our officers, slain in battle, have paused, as they winged their way homewards, to contemplate with pride their men, their officers all dead, holding on in an obliterated trench, sustained in their resolution by the lesson their dead leaders taught them.