WHAT OUR READERS THINK

Dominion, Volume 8, Issue 2482, 8 June 1915, Page 6

WHAT OUR READERS THINK

THE BACK-BLOCKER AND THE WAR. (To the Editor.) Sir, —In your issue of June 4 I liavo iust rend in your column "What Our Readers Thin];," a letter from a subember signing himself "Hack-Mocker." Without any disrespect to your paper, may 1 say that this particular reader thinks some of the most extraordinary things I have ever read of? He signs himself "Jilaek-Bloekeiy' but if he ip then 1 am a Hottentot- in spite of the fact thai 1 am colonial born of Irish parents. I was brought up in the backblocks, and liavo lived there for nearly ■s twenty \ears, and at the time the war ir commenced was in tho most back-block E . district in the Kir.y Country, which is iUpasws ftot a lifctidv and. ibis i& mi e&.

perience: Tho back-blockers are not a distinct typo, as jour correspondent : would have us believe; in fact, they : are remarkably like tlia average farmers and farmers' sons of tie Wellington province. I have lieard the present war more intelligently discussed in back-block camps than 1 have anywhere in the welMeveloped districts of this province. It is true 111 these camps t.iicy seldom get a newspaper moro than once a week, but they study it the more carefully for t ; bat. No point misses their notice. I do not think that a greater proportion enlisted from any part of the country than from this particular back-block district where I was when the war began. I have 6een entire gangs of bushfellers and navvies enlist in a body, and boys under ago half-demented because their parents would not allow them to go. In case after case I have known these backblockers lease tlifeir sections or get neighbours to manage them so that they might join the Expeditionary Force. In this district I speak of the settlers—at the commencement of the war—formed a coinmitteo, the duty of which was to see to the working of any farms left short-handed through any of the men thereon, or the owners thereof, joining the Expeditionary Force. May I ask your subscriber if such a movement impresses him as being the work of men who possess only a vague idea that, to uso his own words, "England was having a scrap with Germany ?" lean only infer, Mr. Editor, that this supposed back-blocker has a very imperfect knowledge of the back-blocks. The district I speak of is up to tliirty-five miles from a railway Sue, and in many places with no better roads than unsurveyed tracks through standing bush. I might mw'.tion its name but for the fact that many settlers who wish to sell would resent having their district advertised as being so thoroughly back-block. Moreover, I myself have considerable interest there. It is true that backblockers are under considerable disadvantages educationally, but thero are very few who cannot read. In all my experience I have met but two. To sum up, back-blockers are not the forgotten, half-savage type your ludicrous correspondent would have us believe. They are thoroughly conversant with topical subjects, and in the case of this war are doing their duty equally as well as any other section of the' community. To these men, whom he would send, Mahomet-like, to a back-block mount of Ignorance, I offer my sincere condolences. They wculd either be kicked out or laughed at, according to tlio mood in which they found the backblocker. In conclusion, I would suggest that he himself pay a visit to the backblocks : lie would learn milch, and I am sure it would be all news to him.—l am, etc., >A REJECT. GENUINE BACKBLOCKER.