THE QUALITY OF MODERN COURAGE

Horowhenua Chronicle, 9 February 1915, Page 4

THE QUALITY OF MODERN COURAGE

The gi-eat war has proved one thing at least; the enduring bravery of mankind. Military writers of a few yeare ago were sceptical about the soldierly qualities of modern ci€y dwellers, believing that our urban civilisations muet reoessarily sap the fighting spirit and perhaps overoome it entirely. The present struggle has ended , all that sort of comment. Whether Belgian, British, Frencshi, or German, these clerks and factory hands can hold their souls in strength and on the given word can charge and die ae valiantly ae any Spartan. The appalling noise and carnage wrought by modern artillery results in some cases of nervous breakdowns, but very few in comparison with the numbers engaged, and by no means producing effect enough to insure the success trf the assault following the cannonade. The modern soldier eimply digs his trench the deeper and holds on to meet the attack. The big guns are called by opprobrious and coutemptnoTie nicknames such 'ae "Black Marias," "soup steamers," and the like. Napoleon eaid that the rarest sort of courage, but there is lote of that in the trenches along the French border. The Germane have systematically made many of their most determined assulte ui the small houre following midnight, bud these have been met ae calmly and effectively as if under the noonday snn. It will be interesting to see how the psychologists will account (for this, whether it may be ascribed to the very deadlines. , } of modern weapons, or to the decay of superstition or to more occult causes. This much is certain: modern men are worth saving for a better life on earth than many of them have done.