THE FIGHTING LONDONERS.

Pukekohe & Waiuku Times, Volume 5, Issue 191, 14 July 1916, Page 2 (Supplement)

THE FIGHTING LONDONERS.

BRAVEST OF THE BRAVE. Thus has written a lieutenant of a IfOndon regiment, an Islington man himself, of the conduct of his troops m recent fighting: "The men were wonderful. In face of a bad hammering they kept wonderfully cheerful. I would back a company of London boys against any men in the voild. . . The day was a final and lasting proof that the Londoner is the man for pluck." It is one testimony only, out of hundreds of similar testimonies. The great rolls of honour, the V.C. awards, have bristled all through with names out of the 1/ondon regiments. So innumerable have been those epics, that this who'e page would not contain the bare list of them. They have added a new pride and a new lustre to the proudest and most illustrious city in the world; they have blazoned distinction on that snobbish word "Cockney."

Recently I travelled in a train with a captain home wounded from the Dardanelles. "1 am a countryman myself," he " but most- of my men are Londoners born and bred. If 1 talked from now to Doomsday I could not give you an adequate description of the courage, grit and cheerfulness of those fellows in as terrible a fighting ordeal as men have ever eudu/ed in history. He is an amazing chap, the Londoner; burnt by heat, tortured by flies, tormented by thirst, he jokes all the time. Men in action roar but jests under tornadoes of fire. The i-nscathed men bandy the grimmest pleasantries with the wounded v and the wounded scoff back again. You have got to learn the Londoner to understand how his griih humour is triple brass that girds his .brave heart, or some of those jokes in the trenches would appal you. One of my men reeled with a gaping wound in his head. "There go my brains," he gasped. "Bill. I didn't"know you had so many,' cried another fellow, and a moment later he fell himself.

"The marvel of it," continued the officer, "is that all those men were civilian townsmen a year ago. Think of it—the stuffy rooms and the desks, the meagre lunch at the teashop table, the safe, drab, flaccid routine of it all —and then Gallipoli! The greatest endurance that came in a day's life was a 'scrum' for a crowded tramcar, the bravest thing the crossing of a street. And yet 1 have seen those men do deeds of bravery and endurance that beggar all words. And it is not only in the lighting. C'erks, warehousemen, omnibus conductors, shopmen and pinched street vendors—you should see what navvies they can be when it comes to trench digging under that eun. It's given me a new idea of London and the Londoner. His physical stamina is almost as wonderful as his mental stamina." Ho smiled wryly. "I never thought of London as a nursery of brawn—there must be something in Uie air of it."

London air is not only conducive to phpsical health (as. of course, the Re-gistrar-General's figures constantly prove), but it is no-less conducive to mental' health; and it is thee two healths in conjunction that equip the lighting Londoner. There are health resorts that make you physically robust but spiritually inert; there are pleasure rtsorts that make you mentally brisk but physically weak. But London is the supreme health resort that braces men physically and mentally both —and that is why it breeds terrific fighting men. London has for hundreds of years been mentally the mest bracing place on the planet, and to-day London is the physically healthiest great town in the "world" There are thousands of hard-working people of all classes who, either from free will or circumstances, do not have more than two or three constcutive days in the country or by the sea throughout the year, and the physical fitness of most of them is as good as that of yeomen in the slnres. There is no analysing this air ot London. The exile sometimes comes from the sea or the prairies and feels a new glow of health as he walks the London streets. The Londoner who has tried rustication sometimes steals from his Sabine farm and finds elasticity come back to his heavy limbs on J:er adamant pavemeits. The convalescent flees from London to the seacoast, or mountains, and returns still only a convalescent, to breathe recovery on Hoi born Hill or in the vicinity of the Fleet. There is no analysing it—it is, first, the subtle London air that, more than any human factor, perhaps, made London naturally grow into the world's greatest city

But if you.cannot analyse the physical health of London, it is easy enough to "analyse the mental and spiritual health of London that lias also bred these wonderful Linden fighting men. The first-class inoderu lighting man is not only compact of sheer animal strength, he is compact also of mental strength. He does not only need musc'cs tightened in manual labour, 1 e needs brains sharpened against the holystones of his fellows' wits. Ho needs initiative, quickness, resource, alertness, and above sili, the humour Hint tv'll keep his hack stiff and his sou! shining in a hundred stresses. And all of these have been his elenvnials in the great school of London. Jt is just because tiu;> are "Cockneys" that the London fighting men have astounded even the officers who knew and understood them, it is because the\ have held their own in the greatest competitive centre of humanity that tliey held their own so indomitably on the lir'd of battle. The Londoner himself—he who is n.s proud to call himself ''Cockney'' as citizens of another city wee proud to say "Civ:s Romanus sum'-' ("I am a citizen of Kome' ) —he never" di übted what h;.s I.undoners would do.