ENGLAND IN WAR TIME

Dominion, Volume 8, Issue 2492, 21 June 1915, Page 6

ENGLAND IN WAR TIME

A NEW ZEALANDER'S BIPRE9 SIONS, Among the passengers from San Francisco by tile steamer Maitai, which arrived yesterday, was Mr. H. W. Airoy, who lias returned from a trip to America and the United Kingdom. Mr. Airey was bom in New Zealand, and this was his first visit to Britain. He told a Dominion representative that he was intensely interested in all he saw, and he was very favourably impressed with the splendid manner in which the people at Home were facing tho great crisis through which the Empire was now passing. There was no trace of despondency. Everyone seemed confident that the Allies must win in the long run. They were now bracing themselves up with greater > determination than ever for the gigantio task they had undertaken. The course of events had shown them that they must throw their whole energies into the struggle.

Mr. Aire.y remarked that he had often read in books and newspapers hints to tho effect that tho Old Country was "played out." But he saw no signs of decadence. Quite the reverse. Ho was struck by the vigour and alertness of the nation. He had onco seen an American cartoon of London Bridge, showing a woe-begone procession of halfstarved people. This picture bore no resemblance whatever to the bright and busy crowds he saw oil London Bridge. The torpedoing of the Lusitania, which took place while he was in England, caused a wave of passionate indignation to pass over the country. But taken as a whole, the submarino "blockade" of the British coasts was a fiasco. He read from day to day about a few steamers —some of them very small —being sunk, but ho realised, what a comparatively trivial matter these submarine attacks were from the noint of view of warfare, _ when he glanced at the miles.and miles of shipping in Liverpool Harbour. Tho vessels destroyed by the German submarines were only an infinitesimal part of the total of British shipping.^ Some damage had been done in England by German air raids, but the people showed no signs of being panic-' stricken. There was certainly no reign of terror, or anything even remotely' like one. The whole country seemedto realise that it was to be, a fight to a finish, and. judging by public opinion, Mr. Airey did not think that there was any risk of the British Government agreeing to anything in the nature of a premature or inconclusive pcacc.