"BUT LIFE GOES ON."

Pukekohe & Waiuku Times, Volume 5, Issue 221, 27 October 1916, Page 3 (Supplement)

"BUT LIFE GOES ON."

IIf.MAN EMOTIONS OX THE BATTLE-FRONT. Mr. Lloyd George (Secretary of State for Wan. addressing Welsh citizen soldiers recently, said: "You soldiers will be facing experiences when .ill the human emotions wi'l reaeh a pitch which you have never fe't before."

Writing from France on August 9 to his sister, Sergt. R. L. Armit (son of .Mr. J. B. Armit of Austin Street), who was wounded on September 15, and who was reported yesterday to have died of his wounds, thus expresses some of his emotions:—

"Sometimes it seems strange to me that life, particularly the social side of it, goes on in exactly the same way as it did b c fove the war. It is not that 1 think it should not do so, but the fact that it does is rather incongruous. A man is killed or wounded. The stretcher-bearers carry him away. If he is badly hit he will murmur sometimes a pitiful request to be put out of his misery. I pick up a paper, and within a few minutes am reading that a new picture theatre has been opened in Wellington, and that Mrs. Blank is holding a series of bridge parties. So the thing goes on .one's feelings becoming more and more bitter as time goes on, until there springs from the heart a determination to live for oneself and one's own folk, letting the rest of the world go to Hell. But time and an environment in which there is less strife will perhaps alter one's perspective. Let us hope so. A good deal happens out here tJ change cue's view of life, but chief of .nil. cne is impressed by the fact that there are illimitable depths in men, which, being sounded, give evidence of the presence cf great good qualities we little believe men to have. There are. of course, occasional exceptions, such as the man who loses the benefits of comradeship in silent brooding over some fancied injustice. These men shut themselves out from the boon of human intercourse in which every barrier is broken down. Then there is another class —an unfortunate class in the colonial army. He is the young officer who gives himself airs which every man knows are assumed for the moment. I can imagine Maeterlinck, the Belgian poet, describing them as souls aloof, shut out by their own folly and the false idea that one must stand apart in order to stand in authority, from communion with their fellows. But whnt Maeterlinck would say of them would hardly interest the majority cf them, since they have probably little knowledge of his writings." The late tergeant Armit was, before he enlisted, chief reporter on th "Southland Times." and. had he lived, would have been 27 years of age on October 27 next. His brother Colin is at the front, while another brother, Mr. E. X. Armit, formerly of the Wellington Press, and more recently on the staff of the "Sydney Daily Telegraph," is .it present in camp with one of the Australian Reinforcement*. — '' Wangmui Chronicle."