The Men Who Are Making the Advance.

Pukekohe & Waiuku Times, Volume 5, Issue 195, 28 July 1916, Page 4 (Supplement)

The Men Who Are Making the Advance.

The Stuff of Armies.==By W. Douglas Newton.

Now that a measure of complete compulsion has been passed, it is well to remember that the British Army is still a voluntary one. Whatever the result of the war, we on our part know we will have fought it n our old and historic way. There can be no doubt of this. Compulsion has brought in the stragglers, but it was willing patriotism tha gathered the hosts. The men who are bound to be soldiers by law are to ! a numbered in hundreds of thousands, but what is that to the willing, foe they must bo numbered by millions ? Th 9 great army of Great Britain had already been raised before Military Service Acts came in. And it is that gireat army which is to win the war — an army of volunteers. THE WAR TO BE WON BY VOLUNTEERS. The men who went into the army f<a the old, the noble reason of patriotism are the men who are going to d:e to give us vi tory. If they had not goue we should have lost by now. If they had not gone we would be losng in Incoming offensive. It is the volunteer army, ready and trained, that is to face the crucial moment of the war. llie conscripts can only come in after, come in useful, undoubtedly, but only after the gjreat army of the willing has done its work. And though, perhaps, it is a sentimental considertion, we can rejoice in that fact. The traditions of our land have been preserved to us in this way and by these men. A race of free citizens, a race not greatly concerned or attracted by soldiering, a race—as Napoleon called it—of shopkeepers, is again, with the power and the honour of its arms, proving its right to stand equal with the greatest soldier races ot tho world. CIVILIANS RATHER THAN SOLDIERS. In the first number of "T.P.'s Journal" that acute and erudite military authority, Dr. Miller Maguire, pointed out how our armies had not merely made Great Britain, but had made Europe as it stands to-day. I think he will permit me to say that the armies he talked of were not armies at all in the Continental sense and certainly not armies in the modern sense of the term. That is, the men who composed them were not soldiers as tne Continent —especially the Continent of our time—con. siders men soldiers. They had undertaken no special form of military train, ing at any time of their life, but were civilians who had left very ordinary and very placid conditions to go to war ; n tho defence of what they considered right. As Cincinnatus was a ploughman rather than a dictator of the Roman Repulbic, so the British are civilians rather than soldiers; but as with Cincinnatus, the British have shown themselves to be unmistakably capable when once they have taken to war. AS IN THE PAST. As it has been in the past, so it >r now. The nation of civilians once more stood to arms, and it is proving the ex. cellenee of the old fight ng spirit in the old fighting way. To-day the splendidly efficient and heroic little army of Mons has all but vanished, and in its place are arrayed tne men of the Ne.v ArniV the m,en who had no particular desire to fight—the butchers, the baiters, the clerks and candlestick makers, tho crofters, the polughmen, the factory hands and ti.,3 professionals, and men of all grades and types. Like their fathers of Agincourt, of the Low Countries,. and tho Peninsula, they have taken arms in hand to go out to brave war for brave and olden ideals. ft i' Ii i !-=-! 1 * a - " B * 1 « £«" r*®TWi FROM THE WARP AM) WOOF Or ORDINARY LIFE. Especially now since tho autumn days of last year, in fact—are the young men who followed a thousand trades, Out never that of a soldier, facing the machine-made soldiery of Prussia, and showing the excellence of their qita.ities. All the sharp battles that strike .it us out of the turmoil of war, T.oos, St. Elol, the Ypres scraps, as well as the fighting in Egypt, about Salonika, and that, a short tune ago. in Gallipok, havo been fought by men who, two years ago, never thought ol themselves in connection with war. Men of the ordinary warp and woof of our evi-ry-d-iy iile, farmers and farm hand.-, miner;, warehouse-men, clerks artists and art.

ors, even, ar,o in our first line. Shop-

men, newspaper poet-;, r.nd civil servants are winning the V.C.: .ill actor of Sir I''. U. IJonson's company iia- won the D.S.M.; lawyer* and doctor-, uoeountanis, minors, ami mil! ' ;-nds nr.? gaining honourable ni."dal-. i\ n iioria's or regular battalions ol the Nw Army, whatever one calls tliem. they arc no other than citizens called away trom tlio plough a ml tin- to ;;e i"i ••!<!> (I Will*. SAXON* AND Clil.T Al 1. SKHYK. All classes anil condition- ol our man. hood, and ail our races. t<. are oil', there .'a thci (iriiig line. The ,4:irl of the jjj-..tt : si: m ; -pipes ■- hear,l mi the Klci.ii-li m;ir-ldaml«. :nd tli.ivo are 11 ighiandei s ami Lowland. rs with e\erv d:a!e : ov>r the liord.'!'. lu one iin' l of trend.e> the (ieriiian soldiers listen to part - 'tiys sen!.' in such trained harmony that ti:- V sound ;:s if a batiahon oi operaMiieer- I: eoui." ini t the lirinfz linr> The We' ,1 !".'•]< siva!; tlioir own !.'nenn'je. |-'ei' •! t 'vie no officer ro- ! hi.- coiii'.nand uide*- 1 spoko

it as fluently os running water by Aberystwyth, and even orders were given in this tongue until a few Saxons, discovered in the ranks, failed to form fours and know their left hand from their right in Welsh. 3#r. Philip Gibbs, the brilliant correspondent of the "Daily Chronicle," writes that, and writes many times of this wonderful picture of all our youtli out at war. I heard an Australian on.o day imitate the laughing jackass in the darkness of a Flemish night with a weird and wonderful effect. The French Canadians do not need to learn the language of the peasants in these market towns. Soldiers from Somerset use many old Saxon words which puzzle their Cockney friends, and the Lancashire men have brought the Northern burr with them and the grit of the Northern spirit. And Ireland has sent the bravest of her boys out here. THERE IS A CITY CALLED LONDON. The men whose real Ife is of fields aud factories, the pioneer men from overseas, aro in that picture; but the men of the cities, and especially the capiti! of cities, London, aro to be seen at war also.

Well, there is a city called London which breeds some good men too It is "no mean city" which sent out the 47th Division of Territorials irom the Civil Service and the Post Office, from City offices, warehouses, playhouses. and all professions and businesses of the great old place. There is 110 sign of decadent civil isation about these young men, and one is astonished that the wear and tear of City life and the atmosphere of its offices have left no trace in phys'que and physiognomy. . Certainly not in physique, though perhaps one can tell them as London men by features a little more keenly cut than those of provincial battalions. SHROPSHIRE LADS, AND STURDY SOLDIERS. The old fighting physique, the oii hard bodies that carried our fathers through their wars, are to be seen 111 all, clerks or countrymen. Hero is Mr. Gibbs's impression of the Shropshiremen, the King's Shropshire Light Infantry, who fought and won back a line of trenches from tho Germans at the end of April, Shropshire lads, country born and. country bred, who have followed tha, plough down the bg brown furrows of our English soil, have fought on many fields of Europe before ths war. The old stock has not weakened. Tho old stock has not weakened, no" the old manner of going to wk changed. TIIO men have left the plough as their fathers did to follow Wellington. Like their fathers, they may not b,o soldiers as the military nations deem u en soldioi's; but for all that they are fit to meet any in tne world. HOW DO THEY FIGHT? LISTEN. And how do these young men wh> knew not war as preached by the apostate of Prussia hold themselves in war P Well, the Prussian drill sergeant must be surprised at them. The only way tho Prussian can tell them (as fighters) from his own manufactured article is that they are better; better, more tenacious, and more terrible .n action. They have taugh. the enemy this grim lesson, not merely in France and Flanders, but on every field of fighting —Egypt, Africa, Salonika, Gallipoli, and Mesopotamia. The men ol tho New Army have proved themselves peers in the ordinary, extraordina.\ bravery of the war. It was, for m stance, men of the citizen force, men of the London Irish, who dribbled a football right into the trenches of Loos, and who helped win the place with their dash. It was a man of the Ne.v Army, a private in the Gordons, who. in that Big Push, advanced at a walk right up to the German lines playing mouth organ —at a walk, with th 1 shells bursting all around him. It w.u men of the New Army, the Connaughts, Ministers, and Dublins, who saved the day when the Allies were retiring down the Vardar Valley to the Greek frontier. They were callow Irish lads thathad not known drilling, or shooting, or war before this war, but they remained firm, allowed themselves to be cut to pieces (while they gave as good as they took), and saved the situation when the French flank had Keen driven

CIJMI3ING INTO HELL ON AN AEROPLANE." I'lio young men who were civilians first and soldiers only when their court, try called have shown splendidly throughout the War. I'lie Irish regiments named above, with the l.oinster>, had already earned their laurels in Uallipoli. At Suvla, they landed with shells bursting about the lighters, and land mines blazing off as tliey set foot 011 he beaches. Undismayed, their coolness undisturbed, the\ forne'd for attack as I' on the parade ground. Going to the altaek, their deu'eanoiu was >ot;ibio in tho l'nec of manifold terms. An Anzac officer -aw them in the e.ssault. H" cannot prai>.- tin re enough. Tivir landing at >uvla l!ny wist!.greitr'it thin;>; \ in v.-'l! evr nad oi' in bonks by highbrows Tlu y that wit lies , rI ili.. ndvane" will m ver forget it. Hide Is and >hrapn< 1 rained an theni. yet tli 'v nova' wavered. The wav they took thai bill (now called Dublin iliili was iho kind of thine that would niai'.e yon pim-h yourself

to prove that it was not a cheap win? aftermath. How they got there Heaven only knows. As the land lay, climbing into hell on an aeroplane seemed an easier proposition than taking that hill.

"THEY CHARGED INTO THE FOREST."

Gall-ipoli saw the magnificent fighting and death of that wonderful battalion of workers from the King's estates. At Suvln, the sth (Territorial) Battalion Norfolk Regiment performed that deed which will for all time remain one of tho finest as well as the most tragic memories of tho war. Sir lan Hamilton set down their exploit in gravely dramatic language. The battalion had rushed a hill to disiodge the Turks from somo woods.

Among these ardent souls was part of a fine company enlisted from the King's Sandringham estates. Nothing more was .ever seen or heard of any of them. They charged into the forest and were lost to sight or sound. They were men from field work on tho Sandringham estates j men from civil occupations at Yarmouth and Lynn, and the broad, flat level of Norfolk. But they charged up hill into certain death, and nearly all of those men who had no real inclination towards soldiery died a glorious soldier s death. "It was just a jumbled-up affair,' writes Corporal Biott. one ot the survivors, wlio after the fight was matched ninety miles in four days to his internment camp. " Hie hills were alive with iv'fies and machine-guns." writes a survivor. " Stiil, on we went, rushing forward Men shouted, 'Good old Yarmouth! Good old Sandringham! Good old Downham ! and Good old Lynn!' As they fell on the enemy, N.C'.O's were shouting to cheer the men up: but there was not any need for that for they fought like devils let loose!" BRAVERY UNPARALLELED. Londoners or countrymen, clerks or manual workers, labourers or miners, they have taken in hand the sword, and they fight as men of the race have ever used the sword: bravely, cleanly, ably. Here are the Dorset leomen, fellows used to a sleek country, grassy hills and vales, and equable climate, and a slow and homely mode of life; but tliev are out on the sun-blistering expanse . 1 West Egypt, over against the Tripod border, charging the savage Senussi. The Dorsets. well opened out, swept across the open towards Gaafer Paslia and his machine-guns. Concentrated fire r.i immediately brought to bear on the advancing troops, and Gaafer waited calmly t_> see them OUR OLD STAMP, OUR OLD FIBR'J, OUR OLD VALOUR. As fine as any soldiers of the world, as fine as their fathers before theni: And as their these men of oaNew Army are free men. are willing men too. They are not warriors v choice, they are kindly fellows, simple, industrious, ordinary, and every-dny—-but men of our old stamp, our old fibre, any in their devotion and splendour i.-i arms. —ln "T.P.'s Journal of Great Deeds."'