These were imperious, able, resolute men, well drilled, and
with a high military standard of honor. They upheld with jealous pride
the reputation of an army which in that century proved again and again
that on stricken fields no soldiery of continental Europe could stand
against it. They wore a uniform which for the last two hundred years has
been better known than any other wherever the pioneers of civilization
tread the world's waste spaces or fight their way to the overlordship of
barbarous empires; a uniform known to the southern and the northern
hemispheres, the eastern and the western continents, and all the islands
of the sea. 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.
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