How to look on the 'look'?

[Haihao]

[Yankee]

Hi Haihoa

There should be a comma in the sentence and you could reword that part this way:

"... if it had pleased the commander in chief to look under the uniforms, he would have found a clean shirt on every man, and the appointed number of articles in every knapsack."

Does that help?

Amy
_________________
Amy
.
ESL teacher, translator, and a native speaker of American English

[Alan]

Hi,

There is no real problem here. The infinitive phrase ' to look under ...' is the object of 'had it pleased ...' This is another way of saying: If the commander had wanted to look under ...., he would have found ..... This is in fact the so called third (or impossible) conditional construction.

A
_________________
English as a Second Language
You can read my ESL story Communicating with you?

[Haihao]

Oh, what a fool I was,.., am! Now it's as clear as noon! A million thanks to both of you.

haihao