If he doesn't he gets hell.
There's a lot in it. You bring a man out from a tight corner where
he's been in hourly contact with death; he's apt to think, "What's the
use of taking pride in myself. I'm likely to be 'done in' any
day. It'll be all the same when I'm dead." But if he doesn't keep
clean in his body, he won't keep clean in his mind. The man who has
his buttons shining brightly and his leather polished, is usually the
man who is brightly polished inside. Spit and polish teaches a man to
come out of the trenches from seeing his pals killed, and to carry on
as though nothing abnormal had happened. It educates him in an
impersonal attitude towards calamity which makes it bearable. It
forces him not to regard anything too tragically. If you can stand
aside from yourself and poke fun at your own tragedy--and tragedy
always has its humorous aspect--that helps. The songs which have been
inspired by the trenches are examples of this tendency.
The last thing you find anybody singing "out there" is something
patriotic; the last thing you find anybody reading is Rupert Brooke's
poems. When men sing among the shell-holes they prefer a song which
belittles their own heroism. Please picture to yourself a company of
mud-stained scarecrows in steel-helmets, plodding their way under
intermittent shelling through a battered trench, whistling and humming
the following splendid sentiments from _The Plea of The Conscientious
Objector_:--
"Send us the Army and the Navy.
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