But as
it continued year after year doubts crept in, dreadful suspicions of
truth more complex than the old simplicity, a sense of revolt against
sacrifice unequally shared and devoted to a purpose which was not that
for which they had been called to fight.
They had been told that they were fighting for liberty. But their
first lesson was the utter loss of individual liberty under a
discipline which made the private soldier no more than a number. They
were ordered about like galley--slaves, herded about like cattle,
treated individually and in the mass with utter disregard of their
comfort and well-being. Often, as I know, they were detrained at rail-
heads in the wind and rain and by ghastly errors of staff-work kept
waiting for their food until they were weak and famished. In the base
camps men of one battalion were drafted into other battalions, where
they lost their old comrades and were unfamiliar with the speech and
habits of a crowd belonging to different counties, the Sussex men
going to a Manchester regiment, the Yorkshire men being drafted to a
Surrey unit.
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