And the inspections! No end to these, either. Saturdays the inspection of arms, always with the same observations and epithets of “Dirty soldier”! “Pig”! and similar amenities. For a variation you have examinations as to your cleanliness, when your captain assures himself that your hands and feet are clean! Every month there is something still better—the so-called “hospital inspection;”12 then the pork-butcher of the regiment examines your most private parts! Have delicacy of feeling, and they will make it a laughing stock in the army; your delicacy will soon be crushed under the ignoble paw of your commanders. “The army is the school of equality;” so say the hirelings of the bourgeoisie. Equality in brutalization—yes! But that is not the equality we want.
Our inspections continue; every three or six months (I no longer recollect which) there is a kitchen inspection by a commissary of some sort; every year a general inspection by the commander of the division. During the fortnight which precedes this latter there is a cleanup in the barracks; kitchens and premises are cleaned. For a diversion you have one day an inspection by the sergeant of the week,13 next day the company inspection, then regiment inspection, brigade inspection, division inspection, corps inspection14—inspections are endless! At each of these inspections you must arrange your outfit on your bed: first a handkerchief—which is religiously preserved for these occasions—which you spread out delicately on your bed; on this handkerchief you must arrange your brushes, your extra pair of boots, your drawers—which likewise are hardly ever taken out except on those particular days—an undershirt rolled up in a certain way, and of a certain length, your nightcap, your grease-box, your bottle of polish, a needle-case, thread, and scissors. In order that this exposition may be made according to the rules, illustrative placards are posted in the bunk-room, which must be consulted every moment in order to know the exact place for the everlasting brush, the bottle of polish, and all the other equally important objects. For you must be very careful to put every object in its place! If not, you will soon hear a storm of imprecations bursting upon your ears, vomited forth by whichever of your chiefs happens to perceive the irregularity. Know that the death penalty would not be too heavy to expiate such negligence! Horror! Abomination and desolation! A bottle of polish in the place intended for the grease-box! It would be the ruin of France if the general should come to know of it! We have already spoken of the consummation of the art, but here is sublimity attained: they make you wax the feet of the bed!15
It is in those inspections at which a general presides that the servility of the subaltern and even of the superior officers is shown. Front the instant the general is spied, you behold these officers, so arrogant before the poor devil of a private, crawl and cringe, range themselves most humbly behind the general, who on the other hand draws himself up—when he is not broken down with paralysis16—proud as Lucifer! And his eyes! Fulminating lightnings upon the wretch who lays himself open to an observation from the grand chief! The officers are all topsy-turvy; there is a trooper with a needle short, or who, having forgotten that the fortnight ended the night before, has buttoned his overcoat on the left side when he ought to have buttoned it on the right! The colonel stammers with fury, the commander quakes under his tunic, the captain is green with fright; the corporal alone says nothing; he knows that every one of them, commencing with the sergeant, will take satisfaction out of him. His course is clear; he will turn around and revenge himself upon the delinquent.
Between times, while there is no inspection in view—usually on Saturday afternoon—in order to liven you up a bit, they call for fatigue-duty in the quarter; this consists in making you walk up and down the barrack-yard gathering into heaps the stones and pebbles that may be found therein. After an hour of this agreeable pastime, you go up again to the bunk-room; the little piles of pebbles are scattered by the passers of the week, so you begin again the following Saturday. The military trade has a number of these spiritual little distractions.
And when in the evenings, after days thus spent, you feel a desire to chat with your companions in slavery, their conversation is not of a nature to uplift your morals or inspire you with ennobling thoughts. You perceive a group convulsed with laughter; you approach imagining you will hear something instructive: it is some idiot rehashing smutty jokes, neither new nor wittily told. You turn away and fall in with another group of imbruted creatures, who appear to have no pleasures except in recalling the gluttonies they have been indulging in, or in anticipation of the feast they are going to bury themselves in when the paltry bet they have made, (the amount for which was received from their parents) shall have brought in a few cents. Vulgar gluttony and debauchery! Do not try to go beyond these for they will not understand you! Nothing any longer exists outside of these two pleasures. After this are you astonished that, at the end of three years of this regime, so many men
