Royal Scots of Canada Highlanders - Electric Scotland

BRIGHT thinker and writer (Niebuhr) once wrote :
"A nation cannot possess
a nobler treasnre than the nnbroken chain of a long and brilliant history."
While this is unquestionably the case with nations, it is quite as true with
regard to military organizations.
It perhaps takes one who has performed military service to appreciate
the full significance of corps pride and corps love, but every civilian is able
to form some idea of the extent to which those qualities exist in the composition
of the really good soldier, and of the value placed upon them by those best able
to judge. Corps pride, resulting from an abiding affection for and admiration of the
regiment in which their own military lives and those of many beloved and honored
comrades have been spent, and a fixed determination that disgrace shall never fall
upon the venerated organization through any act of theirs, has led soldiers—officers, as
well as men in the ranks, to perform the most noble deeds of daring which illumine the
annals of the various military services in the world. The record of these acts of
devotion is written in characters so large that he who runs may read. Every great
military commander has placed himself on record as appreciating the practical importance
of fostering this powerful military virtue of corps pride.
Lord VVolsely in that invaluable manual "The Soldier's Pocket Book" devotes
several pages (3, 4, 5 and 6) of the opening chapter to emphasizing the value of military
spirit and corps pride in the soldier. His Lordship in this connection remarks : "Historical
traditions and established customs effect the character of regiments more than
might be imagined by those who draw their idea of our service from His Majesty Regulations
No man who knew soldiers or their peculiar way of thinking, or who was
acquainted with the many little trifles that go to make up pride of regiment, and that
form as it were the link between it and discipline, would ever deprive a soldier of any
peculiarity that he prided himself on, without having some overpowering reason for
doing so The soldier is a peculiar animal that can alone be brought to the highest
efficiency by inducing him to believe that he belongs to a regiment which is infinitely
superior to the others around him Make a man proud of himself and of his corps,
and he can always be depended upon."
In Scottish regiments particularly, corps pride has always been conspicuous, for
the Scottish mind will always resent that vicious and sophisticated scepticism which
would rob us of the accumulated inheritance of past deeds, and it is the remembrance of
past deeds, and the spirit of emulation they arouse, that is the very foundation of your
true corps pride.