"However proletarian and semiliterate he may have been, the English soldier, well nourished with meat and beer, stimulated with gin, and convinced of his own racial superiority to the foreign rabble he had to face, was a magnificent combatant, as anyone who has ever seen hooligans in action at a soccer match can readily imagine."

Prof. Alessandro Barbaro, The Battle

(nicked from Mallinson, The Making of the British Army)