The Seed of Empire by Fred M. White

Just for a moment Bentley and Kemp and the rest of them had forgotten the fact that they were so many units in the great struggle. For here they had blundered upon an adventure after the heart of them all. There was a touch of sport in it, with just enough risk to render the incident exciting. Despite all they had gone through, and all they knew that lay before them, it was impossible to quench in them the spirit of British light-heartedness and contempt for danger which has always been the mainspring of British pugnacity. For here was a gigantic spree, an unexpected lark that gladdened the heart of them all and relieved the monotony of the deadly trench work. It is this amazing light-heartedness which has made the British Empire what it is, though historians would have us believe that the driving power behind it all is something deeper and still more sacred.

But that is not the spirit in which the British Tommy has approached his work in the field. Whatever he may feel deep down in his heart, he never shows his feelings; he is ready to die for his country, but he must do it in his own way and after his own fashion, with a jest on his lips and a cigarette in his mouth. Probably it was much the same in the old days of the bowmen at Agincourt and Cressy and Poitiers.