Explore "The New Army in Training" by Rudyard Kipling on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
_Larai meṅ laddu nahiṅ batte_ (War is not sugar-plums). -_Hindi / Proverb._
Working from the East to the West of England, through a countryside / alive with troops of all arms, the car came at dusk into a cathedral / town entirely inhabited by one type of regiment. The telegraph-office / was an orderly jam of solid, large, made men, with years of discipline / behind them and the tan of Indian suns on their faces-Englishmen still / so fresh from the troopships that one of them asked me, ‘What's the day / o' the month? ' They were advising friends of their arrival in England, / or when they might be expected on short leave at the week's end; and the / fresh-faced telegraph girls behind the grilles worked with six pairs of / hands apiece and all the goodwill and patience in the world to back / them. That same young woman who, with nothing to do, makes you wait ten / minutes for a penny stamp while she finishes a talk with a lady-friend, / will, at a crisis, go on till she drops, and keep her temper throughout. / ‘Well, _if_ that's her village,' I heard one of the girls say to an / anxious soul, ‘I tell _you_ that that will be her telegraph-office. You / leave it to me. _She'll_ get it all right.'