Sons of the Empire.

Manawatu Herald, 18 October 1900, Page 3

Sons of the Empire.

————■• I Mr A. Turobull, S.M., has received a letter from his son, Trooper Alan Turnbnll, dated Warm Baths, nth August in which he gives the following picture :— On the evening after I wrote ; to you last we had a grand concert round a huge bonfire in front of our camp. The chief centre of attraction was the pipe band of the Argyle and Sutherlands. * You have no idea how well it sounds with the big drum and little ones. It was a sight never to be torgotten, and as I lay down in tront of the ring, and glanced around, I was never so impressed with the might of our Empire. There opposite, across the blaze, smiled a sun-burnt AngloIndian acquaintance, at present a trooper in Lumsden's Horse, but once a wealthy tea planter ; while here at my side an Imperial Light Horse corporal is rattling off some tales of the times when he was a commission agent in Johannesburg. Also opposite I see the stalwart pipe-major nodding his head in rhythm with the song of a bearded unkempt Queenslander. Behind I am disturbed by the contortions of a hard-faced Rhodesian, trying to dispose of his lengthy frame, and athwart the light comes the unmusical laugh of a West End gunner, or closer to hand is heard the voice of the man from Winnipeg " Guessing or calculating that the Generals are too soft for blood, for blood they came for, and blood they will have." But clean or dirty, college-bred or farm hand, they all fight like fiends, and woe betide the foe who has to face a Hussar charge or the crack of a Canadian rifleman's weaoon. .