The Manawatu Herald. THURSDAY, JULY 20th., 1916. WHEN THE MEN COME BACK.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 1579, 20 July 1916, Page 2

The Manawatu Herald. THURSDAY, JULY 20th., 1916. WHEN THE MEN COME BACK.

“TITEKE is only one tiling’ I lint cun imtl will save the British nation and loach it a new way of life —it is tin 1 British Army.” Tims writes Professor J. 11. Morgan, in “Land and

Wilier,’’ on the possible effects of army (milling' on millions of British civilians. “01! one thing we can he quite sure," lie continues. “The men who have been through this great freemasonry of arms will be very impatient of (lie old appeals to class-prejudice which have so long disfigured our politics. After the realities of war, the sham-lights of polities will wear a singularly inept vesture, and in nothing will they appear so inept as in their attachment to words and phrases. It may be, also, that they will be far less conscious of rights and far more alive to duties. They will bring a highly critical mind to bear upon these things. The clerk or the artisan who has been an N.C.O or a subaltern, and the employer or professional man —(here are many such —who has served as a private in Ihe ranks, will have learnt, the one to rule, the other to obey, and each will have discovered the peculiar secret of all armies: that he who aspires to give commands must have learnt lirst how to execute them. Of all the lessons that (he Army can teach that is the most enduring and the most valuable and (Ik* oik* which the average Englishman —especially the Englishman who has not been to a public school —needs most to learn. Another is (he habit of turning your hand to anything without enquiring too closely whether it is the job you contracted to do or whether you are getting the pay you bargained for. The lirst thing a man in the Army linds —particularly the infantryman —is that his pay bears no appreciable relation to his work, that he may be Called ij(pon at any moment to do another man’s job, that there’s no such thing as piece-work rates and ‘overtime,’ and that it’s a mere chance whether he can count on no more than four days in the trenches, four in support, and no less than ten in billets after he has rung the changes on the one and the other. These men are going through a great school of

patriotism, mid it. would he affectation to deny that nine out of ten Englishmen badly needed it.”