AMERICA'S FEELING.

Hokitika Guardian, 14 December 1918, Page 4

AMERICA'S FEELING.

ADMIRATION FOR THE I ANZACS. (From the “Los Angeles Examiner.”) Australia and New Zealand are so 1 far away that the majority of Aiiieri- i cans, before the war, knew little more i about these great Commonwealths i than that they were located under tha 1 Southern But among other things, this war 1 has been a great educator. Probably all of us have a much better geographical knowledge # than we .have ever had before, and undoubtedly all of us have learned to know a great deal more about other peoples. , The exploits of the Australian and New Zealand fighting men have become household tales in American homes. From the day when the Anzacs forced a landing on thi Gallipoli Peninsula down to the present year scarcely a week has passed without some fresh and well-deserved eulogium of some new heroic exploit of the men who have come from the farthest off of England’s colonies , to fight under the flag of the mother country. Americans have not been slow to appreciate British valour or French valour, but it may be said without any disparagement.that we Americans have a peculiar feeling of admiration and of friendliness towards the Armies, which is perhaps shared only by the troops of our neighbour, Canada. For one reason there is a strikinglikeness in thought, in manner, in carriage, and in physique betweeu the Anzac fighting men and , our own American troop’. Aged veterans who have lived long enough to see both say that the similarity between the Australian and New Zealand troops and those Western soldiers who composed the armies which broke the Confederacy in two under the leadership of Grant and Thomas is very striking. The same democratic comradeship between officers aud men ; something, too, of the same carelessness as to the niceties of military etiquette and the same individual courage and resourcefulness ; the same coolness and the same ability to take care of themselves in ticklish predicaments that characterised the Western soldiers in onr own great war, also characterised these fighting men of the Southern Hemisphere. The}- have every right to the appellation which was bestowed upon our own democratic soldiers— “ the thinking bayonets.” It may bo remarked that the Auzucs, as were our own Civil War troops, have been organised under the volunteer system, the old-fashioned prejudice against conscription still being strong 1 in these Southern commonwealths. The likeness between the democratic institutions of Australia and New Zealand and our own democratic ini stitutione, the similarity between the Auzac soldiers and our own soldiers, and the natural bond of sympathy between peoples entirely free, have all helped to cause the American yeople to look upon the Anzacs with feelings of admiration and of pride that were almost personal. Nothing was more certain than that when our troops arrived in France the strongest feeling of comradeship would spriug up betweeu them and their An/.ac Allies. It is a pleasure to record these matters. Aud it is also a pleasure as well as a subject for useful thinking to know the wonderful results of that colonial system which England lias instituted all over the world and brought to such perfection that the men of her colonies voluntarily and gladly come from the ends of the earth to fight under England’s banner for England’s preservation. Many nations have risen to power in the long history of the world, and have stretched the sceptre of dominion over other territories- and other peoples, and have founded colonial empires that seemed likely to endure for centuries. So Spain did, so Portugal did, and so Holland, in a lesser degree, did, and so France, at one period, did. But it remained for England alone to accomplish the miracle of dominion over far-flung colouiesjuul to maintain that dominion, not by force, but by attaching her colonies to the mother country bv the strongest bonds of enduring enthusiastic loyalty. The Australian is no Englishman. The New Zealander is no Englishman. And yet there is no man in England whose loyalty to England and whose readiness to suffer and die for England exceeds that of the average Australian or New Zealander, We think that this is the greatest single fact recorded in the history of mankind—this devotion and loyalty of England’s colonies to the country which mothered them. We see the same result of evidence to the north of us in that splendid dominion which has been our friendly neighbour for more than a century, and whose boundary, abutting on our I own for nearly three thousand miles, shows on neither side a single fortress nor a single gun. The lime may come when either th rough choice or the exigencies of I future world relations those wonderful colonies which England has mothered all over the vor Id may take on the'r own independent identity and build up republican sovereignties on the model of our own. JJut whether such political changes occur or not, there is no force in the future, that is likely to sever or even greatly to weaken those strong bonds of affection and of tradition and of blood which now tie together the component parts of the British Empire.