How can we teach the soldier to do this ; how can we take an ordinary peace-loving citizen and convert him into a soldierthat is, into a man who is willing to hold back his instinct of selfpreservation and sacrifice his life, perhaps for a thoughtless word of command? This is the problem we must solve if we wish to endow our men with that fighting spirit which commands success.

How can we teach the soldier to do this ; how can we take an ordinary peace-loving citizen and convert him into a soldierthat is, into a man who is willing to hold back his instinct of selfpreservation and sacrifice his life, perhaps for a thoughtless word of command? This is the problem we must solve if we wish to endow our men with that fighting spirit which commands success.
There are two factors we must turn to for assistance ; the first is the character of man, and the second is the law of change. Character gives to us our direction ; change enables us to concentrate and distribute. Certain men possess characters which are totally unsuited for war, especially for combatant work ; these we must avoid, but their class is not a large one, since most men are in nature primitive, and primitive man is a fighting animal.
And now as to change.All mortal things are born, they live, and they perish ;their lives are one continuous change ;for no man even for an instant remains the same man. It is truly a wonderful thing to realize that we cannot raise an eyelid, breathe a breath, or utter a word, without our bodies and brains being changed.In fact, there is not a single thing which surrounds us which is not changing us, at this very moment, for better or for worse.This being so, then, because of the law of change, inseparable from life, it is possible for us to take a man, and, through his surroundings, change him from a peace-loving citizen into a soldier-that is, into a man who thinks more of an order than he does of his self-preservation.
How, by applying this law, can we best control the instinct of self-preservation? I will take an example in order to illustrate what I mean.
A child is brought up in some filthy slum, surrounded by squalor; it witnesses theft and listens to lying ; drunkenness and sordidness surround it ; its life and environments are one long degradation.Is it to be wondered at that this child becomes a criminal? No ;for in such circumstances few children will possess sufficient force of character to win the moral battle against these influences.
In place of filth and squalor, drunkenness and theft. I will substitute cleanliness, sobriety, and honesty-the family virtuesand in place of a criminal we get a moral man. I will now add honour, patriotism, and comradeship-the national virtuesand we get the rough elements of the soldier. Suppose that these are developed by adding knowledge, skill, endurance, and pluck-the individual virtues-then we get the fighting man, the soldier, a synthesis in every sense.
We must remember this-a man’s mind is being continually bombarded by impressions from outside, and, as his character changes with each shot, it is our duty to see that it changes in the right direction.