WOMAN'S WORLD

Dominion, Volume 8, Issue 2538, 12 August 1915, Page 3

WOMAN'S WORLD

(Continued, from page 2) WAR, AS SEEN IN LONDON Very forcibly is anyone reminded of what tho war means if work or pleasure takes her from home late at night in the neighbourhood of the big stations in London (writes a correspondent in the "Queen"), for it is then that the trains from the battlefield come in. Few who walk down from theatre land to Charing Cross will forget the impression where normally in June gaiety .is at its height. All is so quiet; dark, too, but this seems less noticeable than the quiot. Rows of ambulances stretch in long, unbroken line up to the brighter Strand on tho north, curving away on tile south into the dark cavern under tiho i bridge, and out again by the dim, swift-flowing river Ghostlike they are, these carriages for the sorely suffering, ghostly alike in their dim grey, which melts into indistinguishable noth ingness at the smallest distance, save for the glow of their blood-red sign that shines with a radiance unmistakable in the grey mists of the distance. Ghostly, too, is tho silence which attends them —the advent of • tho motor has much enhanced this, for there' is no cheery champing of the bit, no clinking .of chain or wheel. Alongside of tho ambulances are cars, lent by their owners so willingly for those whose injuries fit them for such conveyance. Beautiful cars they are, too, for tho most part, strawberry leaves and coronet, crest and coat' of arms telling their own tale on tho panels: and the 'chauffeurs who sit so. motionless waiting at the wheel aro but part of the prevailing silence. No word, no sound is heard, till a* whisper passed down tho rank sets silent engines in motion, and all glide 6tealtliily forward. Why? Tho train is in, the train from the battlefield, oven as we waited and wondered when it would come. In, without a whistle or hoot, sentient of the suffering burden it bears, part of the- great conspiracy to save jar or noise to those hefoes. Swiftly each ambulance receives its load of six or eight stretchers, carried so gently, slipped so carefully into their positions that often the soldier who has endured so much hardly wakes from sleep, and glides away into the grey silence of the night to the hospital ward, all brightness and rest, where all is in readiness. Those who can use the cars, though, break the silence often enough with a laugh or jest as willing arms and capable hands help them, ere they, too, are borne away to rest and refreshment.

' It was of London's lads that a General said, after one of the hottest actions,' . "'They are tho finest battalion God ever made." Not a "swagger" battalion, either, but just tho London Rifle Brigade, at whose memorial service, held at St. Botolph's, Bishopsgate, the Bishop of 'London, was tho preacher, as ho lias Ion? been tho inspirer and friend. Coster and clerk, merchant and errand lad, all found a place in its ranks, leaving prosperity and adversity alike for full service with the expeditionary force, ■ when home defence only would have been a fulfilment of bare duty; giving their lives gallantly and gladly for the King and for England, for honour and the peace of the world, tliat Christian principles may triumph over the pagan gospel that might is right. It- is true, as the Bishop said, tliat the predominant feeling oil that solemn occasion was a great, a noble pride in these of London's sons, a certainty that while such spirits sorved and suffered right would prevail, and that the drums which thundered out the great march at the end presaged victory for the cause as well as the greatest victory of ail for those who had given their lives in the greatest of all causes.