'No,' said Foster, 'they ought to be considered _before_ they decide to have a court-martial at all. A case like Penrose's never ought to have got so far.'
'You're right--I don't know why the devil it did.'
'After all,' said Williams, 'you've got to consider the name of the regiment. What would happen----'
But I could not stand any more of that. 'I think Smith's on the right line,' I said, 'though I don't know if it would ever be workable. There are, of course, lots of fellows who _feel_ things far more than most of us, sensitive, imaginative fellows, like poor Penrose--and it must be hell for them. Of course there are some men like that with enormously strong wills who manage to stick it out as well as anybody, and do awfully well--I should think young Aston, for instance--and those I call the _really_ brave men. Anyhow, if a man like that really does stick it as long as he can, I think something ought to be done for him, though I'm damned if I know what. He oughtn't....'
'He oughtn't to be _allowed_ to go on too long--that's what it comes to,' said Smith.
'Well, what do you want,' Foster asked, 'a kind of periodical Wind-up Examination?'
'That's the kind of thing, I suppose. It _is_ a medical question, really. Only the doctors don't seem to recognize--or else they aren't allowed to--any stage between absolute shell-shock, with your legs flying in all directions, and just ordinary skrim-shanking.'
'But damn it, man,' Constable exploded, 'look at the skrim-shanking you'll get if you have that sort of thing. You'd have all the mothers' darlings in the kingdom saying they'd had enough when they got to the Base.'
'Perhaps--no, I think that's silly. I don't know what it is that gives you bad wind-up after a long time out here, nerves or imagination or emotion or what, but it seems to me the doctors ought to be able to test when a man's really had enough; just as they tell whether a man's knee or a man's heart are really bad or not. You'd have to take his record into account, of course....'
'And you'd have to make it a compulsory test,' said Smith, 'because nowadays no one's going to go into a Board and say, "Look here, doctor, I've been out so long and I can't stand any more." They'd send you out in the next draft!'