We were trained in the army for ten weeks and in this time more profoundly influenced than by ten years at school. We learned that a bright button is weightier than four volumes of Schopenhauer. At first astonished$$$ then embittered$$$ and finally indifferent$$$ we recognised that what matters is not the mind but the boot brush$$$ not intelligence but the system$$$ not freedom but drill. We became soldiers with eagerness and enthusiasm$$$ but they have done everything to knock that out of us. After three weeks it was no longer incomprehensible to us that a braided postman should have more authority over us than had formerly our parents$$$ our teachers$$$ and the whole gamut of culture from Plato to Goethe.