TALL NEWZEALANDESR

Dominion, Volume 10, Issue 3050, 11 April 1917, Page 6

TALL NEWZEALANDESR

, IMPRESSIONS OF OUR MEN AT THE FRONT l__ : . BY LORD NORTHCLIFFE (Specially Written for the United Cable Service, Australasia, . by Lord Northcliffe.) Headquarters, New Zealand Division, France. It seems a long, long while since the great Imperial highway, the Strand in London, began, to be decorated by tall young men in khaki, with queer, buncbed-up hats with a line of red in their khaki pugaree. No one knew who they were at first, but they are now a familiar part of the scene — these New Zealanders, whose coiaplexions are as bright as the red in their hats. Their average size is more than equal to that of the average Higb.la.nders or Australians. There must be something in the climate of New Zealand which makes things grow. The ordinary English brown trout becomes as large as a salmon after a generation or two in New Zealand rivers. A New Zealand stag of Scottish origin makes a home specimen look like a dwarf. The modest European watercress develops into an ,, arboreal growth that blocks the , streams. New Zealand soldiers, like Australian, have a distinct bearing and graceful walk peculiar to themselves. The New Zealand football team who visited Great Britain some years ago surprised our public by their size, but were regarded as picked men. The day I have just spent with the New Zealand Army in France is conclusive evidence of the wonderful physique of the New Zealanders, and makes one hope that after the war, when the agricultural land of England is once again tilled as it was 100 years ago, we shall approximate in size to the Antipodeans, which, except for the Highlanders ana the Dalesmen, we certainly do not today. lam making no criticism of small soldiers in writing thus, for most Japanese soldiers are midgets by comparison with these oversea troops. The Japanese are just as good, in this new kind of warfare as they were in the comparatively antiquated method's in vogue in Manchuria, as the several specimens in our Army have proved.

A Family Army. The' New Zealand Array is a compact and well-equipped family. It had the advantage of the later British Armies in the compulsory military training ot. its members before the war. It flas another advantage that most of its Army is. recruited from open-air men and not from clerks and factory hands; for even the clerks and factory hands in it are largely open-air, men. A further advantage is that the military spirit was not extinct in New Zealand, as in England. The Maori War was fought within the memories of living men. The last blood shed in warfare in our- fields and villages was in Stuart days—so long ago that Newbury and Sedgemoor are lost to knowledge except in books. I might even enumerate a fourth advantage of the New Zealanders. They are largely the unspring of picked sos'rt of the best English yeoman families, the thriftiest Scottish families, ana- iKb adventurous Irish who crossed the. many seas in Victoria's earliest days as Queou. Woman Suffrage, as at the time of :the Boer War, again proved militant'in a just cause. The women voters in New Zealand, whose busy needles have never stopped since they sent forth their men, are as anxious to quell Prussianism as the most eager of the Allies. As a race we are said not, to •be gifted with great imagination, but I doubt whether any other people would have sent.so great a proportion of its manhood 13,000 miles to tight for a crusade.'

At Headquarters. I found the New Zealanders amid the muddiest, floodiest scene imaginable. Streams had swollen into rivers, and rivers into lakes. It was a cold, drab, and cheerless morning when my motor-car drew up at Major-Gcneral Sir Andrew Bussell's headquarters. The river, which Mr. Censor will not let me name, had almost swallowed up. his garden, and threatened his drawingroom office. A nail two feet up in the kitchen 1 wall marked the measure of the last flood. Sir Andrew, is from Hawke's Bay. A typical New Zealand .gentleman and. sheep-farmer, who, after a military education at Sandhurst, saw service in India and Burma, and retired to his .flocks after a' heavy' experience of Indian fever. He bade a long adieu to his lambs at the outbreak of war, accompanied the New Zealand Expeditionary Force ■ to Egypt, and then to Gallipoli, where he was a brigadier, then a divisional commander. He has agreeably easy manners, though, according to his men, he by no means so easy with the Germans as he is with -his guests. . ■The floods had so delayed rny journey from the G.H.Q. of the British Armies j in the field many, many miles away, that the appointed lunch with Lieuten-ant-General Sir A. J. Godley, the commander of the corps in which tho New Zoalanders are now fighting, was impossible, and so we joined General Russell and his staff—largely composed of names well known in New Zealand— and one or two British officers. There was also present in the mess a member, of the French Mission, who spoltp English as well as any of us. It was just as with Birdwood s or with .the. Newfoundlanders—most of them took tea with their beef; the Australians —who, from my observations in France,, even exceed the New Zealanders as. ' tea drinkers —must have the digestion of their native emus. The Maoris. We travelled along roads that were not as in New Zealand—for New Zealand is ever green. Here and there were patches of snow, which , on the low lands is only known in the Southern Island —the home of tho splendid Alpine chain and the' Great Tasman Glacier. It was in tho very south of this Southern Island, curiously enough, that the Scotsmen originally settled, but, with a twinkle of the' eye, I was informed that they are. gradually migrating north—almost the only example I have ever known of Scotsmen going steadily in that direction. It should be remembered that the Northern Island of New Zealand is the warmer and more genial of the two. But though the background was mud, flood, and Fknders, roads and villages were alive with New Zealanders, each wearing some badge in indication of his homo district. It is a Territorial Army— that of New Zealand—and the system by winch every man knows every other man in his company is a thoroughly good one. ~ ' , One has not been in this zone long before one finds that tho fern is the emblem of the Dominion—for it is everywhere. Mixed with the pakehas '(Maori for white man) are a number of Maoris. We found out all about the Maoris' fighting capacities in 1860 -1866, and that they have not diminished in that respect is proved by the good work they have done in this war, mrticularly in the Pioneer battalion. They are tall, w0 , .! lmilt, and about -is dark as Sicilians. They have also tho fine free walk and erect carriage. A number of them who wore rumbling along the road in a fern-marked motorlorry turned their heads alertlv to tho. salute- when they saw the red hands of l\\r hpt.s of , tho General Staff. Sir Douglas Haie's pride in his oversea troops—his Canadians, his Aus-

tralians, and-New Zealanders—his tereat in their welfare, his anxiety that the officers they brought with thenS should be promoted as rapidly as possible, is well known. He had' just reviewed the New Zealanders, and I had the opportunity of seeing some thousands of them marshalled in the very village in which he had seen themJ some days before. He had returned-; enthusiastic from the review. Hβ told: me so, but even then I was not pre-; pared for the size of these handsome* telJowfl. ' ,'■..■- In a few minutes General Sir A. JV. Godley, long known to British readers 1 by his Mcf eking ■ record, arrived : with somo members of liis staff. Hie record , in the British Army between the Boer-: War and the'present one is written large, and since then his work at the! Dardanelles has marked him out as a skilful as wsli as a very courageous officer. His New Zealunders are naturally the Ri'plo of his eye. He has seen, many nf "them grow from youth to manhood, for !ih was the officer chosen, to coir.iaard in New Zealand when this. Dminion anil Australia, with a foresight not shown by the Jfother Country, instituted compukory militajjc training. • . ■ . An Initial Advantage. , :

How great an advantage has thatt beneficent law beep to New Zealand in he» entry into the .mammoth .struggle) in France. AVhereas most of ou? lads from farms and shops had to be taught, the very elements of drill and dis- ; . cipline, the Anzacs were almost half, soldiers before the war began. The scenes of waistcoated squads; drilling in .the London parks in the memorable hot days of 1914 we're unnecessary; "down under." These two of the sis-' ter nations were - skilled not only /in. drill but' in musketry, and not only in musketry but in artillery. All tb\s General Godley, who, fittingly enough*, is one of the tallest and most distin-guished-looking generals in . Haig's Army, pointed out with emphasis anil! satisfaction. I asked him how his boys stood thegreat change in climate. .'.'They are naturally healthy, and their good physique makes them able to stand ; whac they are not used to, and that" is the. damp. Some of those from the SoutE-» era Mand," he said, "know about cold/ but none of them know anything or the humid fogs of Flanders." Like .the. Canadians, they-all miss the sunshine, but they do not grumble. , : We sometimes do not realise at home that here ' are two • million mem living their lives, and that when, they are out of the trenches they, need plenty of newspapers, -'maga.-! zines, periodicals, Y.M.C.A. huts, sing-songs, and football. These they possess. The New? Zealanders occupy a fair stretch of the) f ron,t line, and their billets, rest camps, lines of communication, and bases,got a long way back. They therefore formf a- New Zealand: world of their, own,; and the average French peasant, who) had never heard of a New Zealander before, knows all about them now an<i likes them. For the war has placed! New Zealand "on the map/ , as the Americans say, with a prominence fbsfj could not have been obtained by-anp other means. .'-.-■ y The whole organisation of the-New; Zealanders in Great Britain and strikes me as being a very well-oiled machine, partly because they are homor genepus in race,- principally _ becautd of their previous military training, and also because they are led by capable officers. Imperial and.other, who-mostt ly know them personally in New Zea* land before, they came to tho war. Large as it is, the New Zealand-arm jj is of course only a microcosm of Haig's wonderful force; but a student of the New ZeaTanders gets a very fair idea; of what a. model British army should be, how it should be provided with ai sufficient number of officers trained tj» the difficult task of staff and intelligence work, how the'officers should hs to some extent promoted from noncoms., and/how; care, should be exer* cised that the .ranks of the non-comsv be not entirely depleted of'their best men. Since writing the foregoing impressions I have talked with many o£ the men about their general arrangements, and found them satisfied as to food, hospitals, and promotion. Every-. pne, of course, wants a but obviously everyone cannot rfet commission. They are all pleased with what I may call the New Zealand rouud —the arrival In England, the. training* and the New Zealand hospitals at! Brockehhurst in the New Forest and at Walton,; which'have between them; accommodation for 2000 patients.

Master Tunneilers. I asked a y<sl7 highly-placed Engho-y officer hia opinion as to the qualities in -which the Now Zealanders ehino. Hβ summed them up by saying that as individual fighters they were equal'td any in France. Hβ spoke particularly well-of. their work on the Somme, which has been described so often thai; I will not recapitulate it; but he mentioned something of which I had nob heard—the New Zealand tunnelling company whioh was allotted for work in a special area. In tunnelling work % they have outwitted the Germans every; time. Many of them perfected theij skill in the coal and cold mines o? New Zealand, and there are well* trained engineers at their head. Thej| can not only out-twmel the Germans, but there is no case on record in which; the Germans have surprised the Britj ish troops provided with New Zealand tnnnellers. "What this means in of mind to an army can only be imagined by those who, like myself, have been at points in tho line where there was grave anxiety as to whether o? not mysterious sounds heard by micro-phone, sometimes by the more simple miners' device of placing the, head in a bucket of'water and listen* ing, were the approach of subterranean Huns. . . , ~v, ■ When it is remembered that| W population of both the islands of New) Zealand is less than that, of .any large London postal district-it, is only ri little over a million all.told- -it witf be understood that thu live and finely organised band of Antipodean Crusaders, constitutes an offering which is 4 splendid contrast to tho levied masses of unwilling Poles, Czechs, TurksJ Ruthencs, Slovaks, and the rest whom] Prussia' has bullied into her trenches*