race was in the cry.

Is it that the higher emotions are not there? Or is it that they
are damped down and covered over as too precious to be exhibited?
Something of each, perhaps. I once met the widow of the man who, as
a young signal midshipman, had taken Nelson's famous message from
the Signal Yeoman and communicated it to the ship's company. The
officers were impressed. The men were not. "Duty!" they muttered.
"We've always done it. Why not?" Anything in the least highfalutin'
would depress, not exalt, a British company. It is the under
statement which delights them. German troops can march to battle
singing Luther's hymns. Frenchmen will work themselves into a frenzy
by a song of glory and of Fatherland. Our martial poets need not
trouble to imitate--or at least need not imagine that if they do
so they will ever supply a want to the British soldier. Our sailors
working the heavy guns in South Africa sang: "Here's another lump of
sugar for the Bird." I saw a regiment go into action to the refrain
of "A little bit off the top." The martial poet aforesaid, unless
he had the genius and the insight of a Kipling, would have wasted a
good deal of ink before he had got down to such chants as these. The
Russians are not unlike us in this respect. I remember reading of
some column ascending a breach and singing lustily from start to
finish, until a few survivors were left victorious upon the crest
with the song still going. A spectator inquired what wondrous chant
it was which had warmed them to such a deed of valour, and he found
that the exact meaning of the words, endlessly repeated, was "Ivan
is in the garden picking cabbages." The fact is, I suppose, that a
mere monotonous sound may take the place of the tom-tom of savage
warfare, and hypnotize the soldier into valour.