A PROTEST

Hokitika Guardian, 4 February 1930, Page 6

A PROTEST

BELITTLING THE SOLDIER

lUnited Press Association--By Electric Telegraph—Copyr'ght.J

(Received this day at 10 a.m.) LONDON, February 3

Major John Hay Beith, better known as 'lan Hay the novelist, addressing a congregation of men at Coventry Cathedral, made a spirited protest against hooks which belittle the soldier. It was said a proper hatred of war had recently developed, but the natural reprobation of war was being allowed to obscure our judgement to such an extent that we were inclined to transfer the horror of war itself to men who. fought. The soldier suffered more ups and downs in popular esteem than any other man. He could not help feeling being unnecessarily belittled at- present, indeed being insulted. We are submerged by a flood of so-called war books which depict , men who fought for us in the late war. For the most part they are depicted as brutes and beasts, living like pigs and dying like dogs. Sonic of these books were conceived in dirt and published for profit. That dirt will bring a stop to the most admirable thing in the British soldier. It was his unconquerable cheerfulness in the utmost squalor and discomfort, oven in the face of death itself. In order to express a horror of war it is sometimes said to t>e a representative picture of British Soldier, when one is depicted as keeping up liis courage by drink, would .be realised. It is overlooked that it is a soldier’s desire that lief.should not be printed in blackest colour.”