That the British man has always liked his
service to be adventurous rather than otherwise cannot be denied, for
each British man began by being young in his time when all risk has a
glamour. Afterwards, with the course of years, risk became a part of his
daily work; he would have missed it from his side as one misses a loved
companion.
The mere love of adventure is no saving grace. It is no grace at all. It
lays a man under no obligation of faithfulness to an idea and even to his
own self. Roughly speaking, an adventurer may be expected to have
courage, or at any rate may be said to need it. But courage in itself is
not an ideal. A successful highwayman showed courage of a sort, and
pirate crews have been known to fight with courage or perhaps only with
reckless desperation in the manner of cornered rats. There is nothing in
the world to prevent a mere lover or pursuer of adventure from running at
any moment. There is his own self, his mere taste for excitement, the
prospect of some sort of gain, but there is no sort of loyalty to bind
him in honour to consistent conduct. I have noticed that the majority of
mere lovers of adventure are mightily careful of their skins; and the
proof of it is that so many of them manage to keep it whole to an
advanced age.
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