Above all, as
statesmen, we must consider qualities by their practical uses. Thus,
he entertained no doubt that the English were superior to all others
in the kind and the degree of their courage, which is marked by far
greater enthusiasm than the courage of the Germans and northern
nations, and by a far greater steadiness and self-subsistency than
that of the French. It is more closely connected with the character
of the individual. The courage of an English army (he used to say)
is the sum total of the courage which the individual soldiers bring
with them to it, rather than of that which they derive from it. This
remark of Sir Alexander's was forcibly recalled to my mind when I was
at Naples. A Russian and an English regiment were drawn up together
in the same square: "See," said a Neapolitan to me, who had mistaken
me for one of his countrymen, "there is but one face in that whole
regiment, while in that" (pointing to the English) "every soldier has
a face of his own." On the other hand, there are qualities scarcely
less requisite to the completion of the military character, in which
Sir A.
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