"
The colonel was profoundly interested in the technic of war, in its
organization of supplies and transport, and methods of command. He was
a Regular of the Indian Army, a soldier by blood and caste and
training, and the noblest type of the old school of Imperial officer,
with obedience to command as a religious instinct; of stainless honor,
I think, in small things as well as great, with a deep love of
England, and a belief and pride in her Imperial destiny to govern many
peoples for their own good, and with the narrowness of such belief.
His imagination was limited to the boundaries of his professional
interests, though now and then his humanity made him realize in a
perplexed way greater issues at stake in this war than the challenge
to British Empiry.
One day, when we were walking through the desolation of a battlefield,
with the smell of human corruption about us, and men crouched in
chalky ditches below their breastworks of sand-bags, he turned to a
colleague of mine and said in a startled way:
"This must never happen again! Never!"
It will never happen again for him, as for many others.
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