You learnt it in books and not in battlefields; and I should like to be present at a scene in which you tried to bribe the most miserable little loafer in Hammersmith as if he were a cynical condottiere selling his spear to some foreign city.

It is not the fact, my dear sir.

You have been misinformed.

The British Army is not at this moment a hireling army any more than it is a conscript army.

It is a volunteer army in the strict sense of the word; nor do I object to your calling it an amateur army.