He enjoyed the affection of his men because he was unusually just and was not in the habit of bullying anyone.
The N.C.O.s trembled before him and in a month he could reduce the most brutal sergeant-major to a perfect lamb.
He could shout, it is true, but he never swore.
He used choice expressions and sentences.
'You see,' he said, 'I really don't like punishing you, my boy, but I can't help it, because the efficiency and courage of an army depends on discipline, and without discipline an army is a reed swaying in the wind.
If you don't have your uniform in order and your buttons properly sewn on or if they're missing it is obvious that you are neglecting the responsibilities you owe to the army.
Perhaps it may seem incomprehensible to you that you are being put in detention just because yesterday at an inspection there was one button missing on your tunic, in other words, a tiny unimportant matter which in civil life would be completely overlooked.
But, you see, in the army neglect of your personal appearance like that must result in your punishment.
And why?
It's not a question here of a missing button but of your having to get used to order.
Today you forget to sew on a button and start getting slack.
Tomorrow you'll already find it a bore to dismantle your rifle and clean it. The day after you'll forget your bayonet in a pub somewhere, and finally you'll fall asleep at your post, because with that unfortunate button you already started on the downward career of a scrimshanker.
So that's it, my boy, and I am punishing you to save you from an even worse punishment for things you might do if you slowly but surely began to forget your duties.
I am sending you to detention for five days, and over your bread and water I want you to reflect that punishment is not revenge but just a means of education. Its object is to reform and improve the soldier who is being punished.'
He should have been a captain long since but his cautiousness in the nationality question had not helped him, because he always behaved towards his superiors with complete frankness and any kind of bootlicking in official relations was beneath him.
This is what he had retained of the character of a peasant from South Bohemia, where he was born in a village among dark forests and lakes.
Although he was just to the soldiers and did not bully them he had one special trait in his character. He hated his batmen, because he always had the bad luck to get the most disgusting and mean ones imaginable.
He hit them across the jaw, boxed their ears and tried to train them by precept and deed, not looking upon them as soldiers.
He struggled with them hopelessly for a number of years, changed them continually and finally sighed:
'Now I've got another filthy bastard.'
He regarded his batmen as the lowest form of animal life.
He was very fond of animals.
He had a Harz canary, an Angora cat and a stable pinscher.
All the batmen in turn treated these animals no worse than Lieutenant Lukas treated them when they too did something mean.
They starved the canary. One batman knocked one of the Angora eat's eyes out. They beat the stable pinscher every time they saw it, and finally one of Svejk's predecessors took the wretched animal off to Panknic to the skinner, where he had him put away, paying ten crowns for it from his own pocket without any regrets.
Then he simply told the lieutenant that the dog had run away from him on a walk.
The very next day that batman was marching with the company to the drillground.
When Svejk came to report to Lukas that he was starting his duties the latter took him into the sitting-room and said:
'The chaplain recommended you and I hope you won't disgrace his recommendation.
I've already had a dozen batmen and not one of them has ever settled down with me.
I must warn you that I'm strict and that I punish terribly any meanness or lying.
I require you always to tell me the truth and to carry out all my orders without grumbling.
If I say to you:
"Jump into the fire", then you must jump into the fire, even though you don't want to.
What are you looking at?'
Svejk was looking with interest sideways at the wall where a cage hung with a canary in it, and fixing his kindly eyes on the lieutenant he answered in a gentle, good-natured tone:
'Humbly report, sir, there's a Harz canary there.'
And after having interrupted in this way the flow of the lieutenant's words Svejk adopted a military stance and looked him straight in the eyes without blinking.
The lieutenant wanted to say something sharp, but observing the innocent expression on Svejk's face said nothing more than
'The chaplain recommended you as a frightful idiot and I think he was not wrong.'
'Humbly report, sir, he certainly was not wrong.
When I was serving as a regular I got a complete discharge for idiocy and for patent idiocy into the bargain.
In our regiment only two of us were discharged in this way, me and a Captain von Kaunitz.
And whenever that captain went out in the street, if you'll pardon me, sir, he always at the same time picked his left nostril with his left hand, and his right nostril with his right hand, and when he went with us to the parade ground he always made us adopt a formation as though it was going to be a march past and said:
"Men, ahem, remember, ahem, that today is Wednesday, because tomorrow will be Thursday, ahem." ' Lieutenant Lukas shrugged his shoulders, like a man who did not know how to express a certain thought and could not immediately find words to do so. He went from the door to the window on the other side of the room past Svejk and back again.
All this time Svejk did 'eyes right' or 'eyes left' wherever the lieutenant was and did it with such a marked expression of innocence on his face that the lieutenant lowered his gaze to the carpet and said something which had no connection at all with Svejk's observation about the stupid captain:
'Yes.
With me there's got to be order, cleanliness and no lying.
I like honesty.
I hate lies and I punish them mercilessly.