[The Winning of the West, Volume Three by Theodore Roosevelt]@TWC D-Link bookThe Winning of the West, Volume Three CHAPTER II 42/111
Subalterns wearing this uniform have fronted dangers and responsibilities such as in most other services only gray-headed generals are called upon to face; and, at the head of handfuls of troops, have won for the British crown realms as large, and often as populous, as European kingdoms.
The scarlet-clad officers who serve the monarchy of Great Britain have conquered many a barbarous people in all the ends of the earth, and hold for their sovereign the lands of Moslem and Hindoo, of Tartar and Arab and Pathan, of Malay, Negro, and Polynesian.
In many a war they have overcome every European rival against whom they have been pitted.
Again and again they have marched to victory against Frenchman and Spaniard through the sweltering heat of the tropics; and now, from the stupendous mountain masses of mid Asia, they look northward through the wintry air, ready to bar the advance of the legions of the Czar.
Hitherto they have never gone back save once; they have failed only when they sought to stop the westward march of a mighty nation, a nation kin to theirs, a nation of their own tongue and law, and mainly of their own blood. The Frontiersmen and the British. The British officers and the American border leaders found themselves face to face in the wilderness as rivals of one another.
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