ABSTRACT
Although generals may plan and exhort, may dominate the battle or leave its incomprehensible tumult to subside of its own volition, in the last resort it is the junior officers and their men, the men of the regiments, who win or lose the day. It is tempting to think of them as though they were twentieth-century warriors dressed in rather an exotic and ornamental fashion. It is true that, in its fundamentals, character seems to alter little from generation to generation, that the motives that drive men today resemble nearly enough those portrayed by Shakespeare, or even Euripides; but the attitudes of mind, the way these motives are expressed, are modified by circumstances and the passage of time. Little more than a hundred years ago, mutineers taken prisoner when Britain was engaged in subduing the Indian Mutiny were executed by being blown from the mouths of cannon. It would be difficult now to envisage such orders being given or British gunners obeying them; one could imagine the fascinated horror of a current affairs television team that had been sent to cover such a ceremony. This does not necessarily imply that the amount of violence in the world has declined, but it does seem to indicate that attitudes have changed.
