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"Men
who adopt the profession of arms submit of their own
free will to a law of perpetual constraint. Of their own
accord they reject the right to live where they choose,
to say what they think, to dress as they like. From the
moment they become soldiers it needs but an order to
settle them in this place, to move them to that, to
separate them from their families and dislocate their
normal lives.
On the word of command they must rise,
march, run, endure bad weather, go without sleep or
food, be isolated in some distant post, work till they
drop. They have ceased to be the masters of their fate.
If they drop in their tracks, if their ashes are
scattered to the four winds, that is all part and parcel
of their job."
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