"Bring in Private Dunshie, Sergeant-Major," says the Company Commander.
The Sergeant-Major throws open the door, and barks--"Private Dunshie's escort!"
The order is repeated fortissimo by some one outside. There is a clatter of ammunition boots getting into step, and a solemn procession of four files into the room. The leader thereof is a stumpy but enormously important-looking private. He is the escort. Number two is the prisoner. Numbers three and four are the accuser--counsel for the Crown, as it were--and a witness. The procession reaches the table at which the Captain is sitting. Beside him is a young officer, one Bobby Little, who is present for "instructional" purposes.
"Mark time!" commands the Sergeant-Major. "Halt! Right turn!"
This evolution brings the accused face to face with his judge. He has been deprived of his cap, and of everything else "which may be employed as, or contain, a missile." (They think of everything in the King's Regulations.)
"What is this man's crime, Sergeant-Major?" inquires the Captain.
"On this sheet, sir," replies the Sergeant-Major....
By a "crime" the ordinary civilian means something worth recording in a special edition of the evening papers--something with a meat-chopper in it. Others, more catholic in their views, will tell you that it is a crime to inflict corporal punishment on any human being; or to permit performing animals to appear upon the stage; or to subsist upon any food but nuts. Others, of still finer clay, will classify such things as Futurism, The Tango, Dickeys, and the Albert Memorial as crimes. The point to note is, that in the eyes of all these persons each of these things is a sin of the worst possible degree. That being so, they designate it a "crime." It is the strongest term they can employ.
But in the Army, "crime" is capable of infinite shades of intensity. It simply means "misdemeanour," and may range from being unshaven on parade, or making a frivolous complaint about the potatoes at dinner, to irrevocably perforating your rival in love with a bayonet. So let party politicians, when they discourse vaguely to their constituents about "the prevalence of crime in the Army under the present effete and undemocratic system," walk warily.
Every private in the Army possesses what is called a conduct-sheet, and upon this his crimes are recorded. To be precise, he has two such sheets. One is called his Company sheet, and the other his Regimental sheet. His Company sheet contains a record of every misdeed for which he has been brought before his Company Commander. His Regimental sheet is a more select document, and contains only the more noteworthy of his achievements--crimes so interesting that they have to be communicated to the Commanding Officer.
However, this morning we are concerned only with Company conduct-sheets. It is 7.30 A.M., and the Company Commander is sitting in judgment, with a little pile of yellow Army forms before him. He picks up the first of these, and reads--
"Private Dunshie. While on active service, refusing to obey an order. Lance-Corporal Ness!"
The figure upon the prisoner's right suddenly becomes animated. Lance-Corporal Ness, taking a deep breath, and fixing his eyes resolutely on the whitewashed wall above the Captain's head, recites--
"Sirr, at four P.M. on the fufth unst. I was in charge of a party told off for tae scrub the floor of Room Nummer Seeventeen. I ordered the prisoner tae scrub. He refused. I warned him. He again refused."
Click! Lance-Corporal Ness has run down. He has just managed the sentence in a breath.
"Corporal Mackay!"
The figure upon Lance-Corporal Ness's right stiffens, and inflates itself.
"Sirr, on the fufth unst. I was Orderly Sergeant. At aboot four-thirrty P.M., Lance-Corporal Ness reported this man tae me for refusing for tae obey an order. I confined him."
The Captain turns to the prisoner.
"What have you to say, Private Dunshie?"
Private Dunshie, it appears, has a good deal to say.
"I jined the Airmy for tae fight they Germans, and no for tae be learned tae scrub floors--"
"Sirr!" suggests the Sergeant-Major in his ear.
"Sirr," amends Private Dunshie reluctantly. "I was no in the habit of scrubbin' the floor mysel' where I stay in Glesca'; and ma wife would be affronted--"
But the Captain looks up. He has heard enough.
"Look here, Dunshie," he says. "Glad to hear you want to fight the Germans. So do I. So do we all. All the same, we've got a lot of dull jobs to do first." (Captain Blaikie has the reputation of being the most monosyllabic man in the British Army.) "Coals, and floors, and fatigues like that: they are your job. I have mine too. Kept me up till two this morning. But the point is this. You have refused to obey an order. Very serious, that. Most serious crime a soldier can commit. If you start arguing now about small things, where will you be when the big orders come along--eh? Must learn to obey. Soldier now, whatever you were a month ago. So obey all orders like a shot. Watch me next time I get one. No disgrace, you know! Ought to be a soldier's pride, and all that. See?"
"Yes--sirr," replies Private Dunshie, with less truculence.
The Captain glances down at the paper before him.
"First time you have come before me. Admonished!"
"Right turn! Quick march!" thunders the Sergeant-Major.
The procession clumps out of the room. The Captain turns to his disciple.
"That's my homely and paternal tap," he observes. "For first offenders only. That chap's all right. Soon find out it's no good fussing about your rights as a true-born British elector in the Army. Sergeant-Major!"
"Sirr?"
"Private McNulty!"
After the usual formalities, enter Private McNulty and escort. Private McNulty is a small scared-looking man with a dirty face.
"Private McNulty, sirr!" announces the Sergeant-Major to the Company Commander, with the air of a popular lecturer on entomology placing a fresh insect under the microscope.
Captain Blaikie addresses the shivering culprit--
"Private McNulty; charged with destroying Government property. Corporal Mather!"
Corporal Mather clears his throat, and assuming the wooden expression and fish-like gaze common to all public speakers who have learned their oration by heart, begins--
"Sirr, on the night of the sixth inst. I was Orderly Sergeant. Going round the prisoner's room about the hour of nine-thirty I noticed that his three biscuits had been cut and slashed, appariently with a knife or other instrument."
"What did you do?"
"Sirr, I inquired of the men in the room who was it had gone for to do this. Sirr, they said it was the prisoner."
Two witnesses are called. Both, certify, casting grieved and virtuous glances at the prisoner, that this outrage upon the property of His Majesty was the work of Private McNulty.
To the unsophisticated Bobby Little this charge appears rather a frivolous one. If you may not cut or slash a biscuit, what are you to do with it? Swallow it whole?
"Private McNulty?" queries the Captain.
Private McNulty, in a voice which is shrill with righteous indignation, gives the somewhat unexpected answer--
"Sirr, I plead guilty!"
"Guilty--eh? You did it, then?"
"Yes, sir."
"Why?"
This is what Private McNulty is waiting for.
"The men in that room, sirr," he announces indignantly, "appear tae look on me as a sort of body that can be treated onyways. They go for tae aggravate me. I was sittin' on my bed, with my knife in my hand, cutting a piece bacca and interfering with naebody, when they all commenced tae fling biscuits at me. I was keepin' them off as weel as I could; but havin' a knife in my hand, I'll no deny but what I gave twa three of them a bit cut."
"Is this true?" asks the Captain of the first witness, curtly.
"Yes, sir."
"You saw the men throwing biscuits at the prisoner?"
"Yes, sir."
"He was daen' it himsel'!" proclaims Private McNulty.
"This true?"
"Yes, sir."
The Captain addresses the other witness.
"You doing it too?"
"Yes, sir."
The Captain turns again to the prisoner.
"Why didn't you lodge a complaint?" (The schoolboy code does not obtain in the Army.)
"I did, sir. I tellt"--indicating Corporal Mather with an elbow--"this genelman here."
Corporal Mather cannot help it. He swells perceptibly. But swift puncture awaits him.
"Corporal Mather, why didn't you mention this?"
"I didna think it affected the crime, sir."
"Not your business to think. Only to make a straightforward charge. Be very careful in future. You other two"--the witnesses come guiltily to attention--"I shall talk to your platoon sergeant about you. Not going to have Government property knocked about!"
Bobby Little's eyebrows, willy-nilly, have been steadily rising during the last five minutes. He knows the meaning of red tape now!
Then comes sentence.
"Private McNulty, you have pleaded guilty to a charge of destroying Government property, so you go before the Commanding Officer. Don't suppose you'll be punished, beyond paying for the damage."
"Right turn! Quick march!" chants the Sergeant-Major.
The downtrodden McNulty disappears, with his traducers. But Bobby Little's eyebrows have not been altogether thrown away upon his Company Commander.
"Got the biscuits here, Sergeant-Major?"
"Yes, sirr."
"Show them."
The Sergeant-Major dives into a pile of brown blankets, and presently extracts three small brown mattresses, each two feet square. These appear to have been stabbed in several places with a knife.
Captain Blaikie's eyes twinkle, and he chuckles to his now scarlet-faced junior--
"More biscuits in heaven and earth than ever came out of Huntley and Palmer's, my son! Private Robb!"
Presently Private Robb stands at the table. He is a fresh-faced, well-set-up youth, with a slightly receding chin and a most dejected manner.
"Private Robb," reads the Captain. "While on active service, drunk and singing in Wellington Street about nine p.m. on Saturday, the sixth. Sergeant Garrett!"
The proceedings follow their usual course, except that in this case some of the evidence is "documentary"--put in in the form of a report from the sergeant of the Military Police who escorted the melodious Robb home to bed.
The Captain addresses the prisoner.
"Private Robb, this is the second time. Sorry--very sorry. In all other ways you are doing well. Very keen and promising soldier. Why is it--eh?"
The contrite Robb hangs his head. His judge continues--
"I'll tell you. You haven't found out yet how much you can hold. That it?"
The prisoner nods assent.
"Well--find out! See? It's one of the first things a young man ought to learn. Very valuable piece of information. I know myself, so I'm safe. Want you to do the same. Every man has a different limit. What did you have on Saturday?"
Private Robb reflects.
"Five pints, sirr," he announces.
"Well, next time try three, and then you won't go serenading policemen. As it is, you will have to go before the Commanding Officer and get punished. Want to go to the front, don't you?"
"Yes, sirr." Private Robb's dismal features flush.
"Well, mind this. We all want to go, but we can't go till every man in the battalion is efficient. You want to be the man who kept the rest from going to the front--eh?"
"No, sirr, I do not."
"All right, then. Next Saturday night say to yourself: 'Another pint, and I keep the Battalion back!' If you do that, you'll come back to barracks sober, like a decent chap. That'll do. Don't salute with your cap off. Next man, Sergeant-Major!"
"Good boy, that," remarks the Captain to Bobby Little, as the contrite Robb is removed. "Keen as mustard. But his high-water mark for beer is somewhere in his boots. All right, now I've scared him."
"Last prisoner, sirr," announces the Sergeant-Major.
"Glad to hear it. H'm! Private M'Queen again!"
Private M'Queen is an unpleasant-looking creature, with a drooping red moustache and a cheese-coloured complexion. His misdeeds are recited. Having been punished for misconduct early in the week, he has piled Pelion on Ossa by appearing fighting drunk at defaulters' parade. From all accounts he has livened up that usually decorous assemblage considerably.
After the corroborative evidence, the Captain asks his usual question of the prisoner--
"Anything to say?"
"No," growls Private M'Queen.
The Captain takes up the prisoner's conduct-sheet, reads it through, and folds it up deliberately.
"I am going to ask the Commanding Officer to discharge you," he says; and there is nothing homely or paternal in his speech now. "Can't make out why men like you join the Army--especially this Army. Been a nuisance ever since you came here. Drunk--beastly drunk--four times in three weeks. Always dirty and insubordinate. Always trying to stir up trouble among the young soldiers. Been in the army before, haven't you?"
"No."
"That's not true. Can always tell an old soldier on parade. Fact is, you have either deserted or been discharged as incorrigible. Going to be discharged as incorrigible again. Keeping the regiment back, that's why: that's a real crime. Go home, and explain that you were turned out of the King's Army because you weren't worthy of the honour of staying in. When decent men see that people like you have no place in this regiment, perhaps they will see that this regiment is just the place for them. Take him away."
Private M'Queen shambles out of the room for the last time in his life. Captain Blaikie, a little exhausted by his own unusual loquacity, turns to Bobby Little with a contented sigh.
"That's the last of the shysters," he says. "Been weeding them out for six weeks. Now I have got rid of that nobleman I can look the rest of the Company in the face. Come to breakfast!"