Explore "The Border Rifles" by Gustave Aimard on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Military law is inflexible -- it has its rules, from which it never departs, and discipline allows of neither hesitation nor tergiversation; the oriental axiom, so much in favour at despotic courts, "to hear is to obey," is rigorously true from a military point of view. Still, however hard this may appear at the first blush, it must be so, for if the right of discussion were granted inferiors with reference to the orders their superiors gave them, all discipline would be destroyed; the soldiers henceforth only obeying their caprices, would grow ungovernable, and the army, instead of rendering the country the services which it has a right to expect from it, would speedily become a scourge.
These reflections, and many others, crossed the Captain's mind, while he thoughtfully followed the guide whom his General's despatch had so singularly forced on him; but the order was clear and peremptory, he was obliged to obey, and he did obey, although he felt convinced that the man to whom he was compelled to trust was unworthy of the confidence placed in him, if he were not an utter traitor.