POLISH.
WE spend hours every day polishing. Tho five ration-tins have to be shined with bath-brick. We clean our buttons and hat-badge with soldier's friend four times a day, and bring our boot leather to a high polish the same number. We polish the many brasses of our equipment with " Blue-bell " or bath-brick, we polish the table-ends and the metal of our trenching tools. We burnish the handles of our bayonets with the burnisher. We polish our dummy cartridges, our oil-bottles, and the weights of our pull- throughs. For kit inspection we polish the backs of our blacking- brushes, clothes- and hair-brushes, with " Nutto " or " Sap." We polish the insteps of the soles of our duplicate pair of boots. The eight metal wash-basins which we never use we bring to a high lustre with " Globe polish," and the backs of our Bibles which we do not read we diligently bring to a polish with " Nugget " or " Sap." Our knife, fork, and spoon are of the sort that rapidly tarnish, so the smart men never use them but keep a duplicate set for use at table, which set they generally keep dirty. Many of us also use brushes of our own, and we wear also our own socks and shirts, so that the Army kit may be always ready for inspection.
Every night we carefully soap the insides of our trouser-creases, wet the outsides, and we obtain smartness by laying the damp gar- ments on our mattresses and sleeping on them. We carefully fold our tunics in a certain way and no other, and we strap up our over- coats on the pegs behind our beds so that they may show not one slightest crease. We keep rags and dusters and silk dusters, shining the wood of our rifles with them till it glimmers, and gently polishing our hat-bands to a colour matching that of the wood. We scrub our equipment and then paste khaki blanco on it. We wash our kit- boxes and bath-brick our shelves. Thus it may be understood that if we turn out smart on parade it is not without pain on our part. II fast souffrir pour C'tre beau.
It does not come at all natural to men recruited mostly from grubby industrialism. I spent the summer before entering the Army lecturing in the canteens of our munition works, and it was a marvellous contrast, the grubbiness of the men in the one, the shine and sparkle of the men in the other. There undressed for medical inspection at the same time as I at the depot six candidates for the Guards The body of one was coaly black and of another brown. But they are white now, marched as they are weekly to compulsory hot baths, and inspected by officers to see that they are clean. Nothing is accounted more shameful than to be found dirty, and for the offence such humiliating punishment as being washed by corporals with scrubbing-brushes is meted out.
They come in unshaven and with lank hair, but woe betide the Guardsman who turns out badly shaved or without the evidence of a weekly haircut. They are introduced to the tooth-brush, and although it seems taken for granted that metal polish can be applied to buttons with the same brush as the powder to the teeth, the men do certainly apply the latter. An officer noticed a strange tint to a tooth-brush one day, learned that it was from metal polish, and asked the man with what brush he cleaned his teeth. " Oh, I borrow one, Sir," lied the man in alarm. " You what ? Oh, you must never do that," said the officer. The men are lectured on keeping their nails clean. One day I heard the following :—" Most of you men are married. I'd be ashamed to sit down to meals with dirty nails. It's such a bad example to your children." None of the men made any comment, but it must have been a new idea to most of them.
But polish does not end with clothes and appearance. The men are expected to walk well. No more slouching and loafing. They
must always remember they are Guards, and are setting an example to the rest of the Army. This has to be drilled into them. They have double as much drilling as the rest of the Army, and they are drilled in a sharper, smarter way. Our turnings on the march are clean-cut and rapid. We form fours with the precision of a bolt movement. We never touch the rifle in drill but wo strike it. We stamp our feet in a staccato when we turn about, and all the time we are cajoled and encouraged and bullied to put bags of swank into it." Above all things we must salute with style. Twice in lecture officers pointed the moral of the state of things in Russia as being due to the- initial folly of not saluting. When at largo, and even when in London, we are supposed to give full and careful salute to every officer we pass.
The King recently paid us a visit and expressed his wish to inspect us. The squad in which I drilled was senior, and we had the honours of preparing for him. As the ex-Sergeant-Major said, rejoicing he was himself out of it, " You'll see wind up in the depot as never before." So it was ; we had a terrific orgy of polishing, and if His Majesty could only have seen us at work the day before he came he would have felt more impressed than by all the glittering parades and Royal salutes in the world. We were inspected at 2 p.m., at 4 p.m., at 6 p.m. And finally at 8 p.m. we laid out all our equipment on our beds, and the sergeant in charge passed it as perfect. Mine was one of the first he saw, and even he seemed to look at it with awe. " Now you must wrap it up in one of your sheets for the night so as none of the cold air gets at it before morning," said he. Next day what a scene"! The officers all going about with drawn swords. All the men drawn up in long ranks, faces tense, bodies breathless, rifles presented and rigid, with the bright bayonets bisecting the tips of our noses. The waiting. The National Anthem and then the King going by, looking at his soldiers one by one and seeing that they were good. Even the sun seemed to have been getting ready overnight and to have saved himself from damp air. And the officers in attendance on the King had an expression on their faces which seemed to say—" The Guards, of course ; always the same. So it was, so 'twill be."
But I cannot help remembering we are nevertheless civilians in khaki and we came from home life, most of us from poky homes with no bathrooms, and we must return there by and by if we do not fall in battle. How much of all this amour propre shall we carry back ? Shall we hold ourselves erect when we get our " eivvy " clothes on ? Shall we at least remember in a practical way that we have been Guardsmen ? " What do you notice about civilians when you compare their bearing with that of a soldier " asked an officer. " Why, an absence of self-respect more or less," he replies. " He doesn't care sufficiently to dress himself properly." " What is the third duty of a soldier ? " asks the sergeant. " Honesty, sobriety, and self-respect," we reply. " And what is self-respect ? " Keeping
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