Britain Calmer Than Ever Before.

Pukekohe & Waiuku Times, Volume 6, Issue 253, 23 February 1917, Page 4 (Supplement)

Britain Calmer Than Ever Before.

"You see," said an English Major I met on the cross-Channel steamer, "all you need to do is to buy your boots a size too large. Wear two pairs of woollen socks and a felt insole with a linoleum bottom. \ou can dry the felt insoles, and it does not make any difference if the boots p.re damp. It's excellent for calloused spots, too.' He was fresh from tho trenches, but that was the only enthusiastic comment I could get out of him. Clothes, warm woollens, good raincoats—that interested him. But the wa r—who was going to win? when was it going to end?—drove him into a bored silence. That Is a typical, a very importa-.u side to the British Army. He prenarcd my mind in a way for what I wag to find in England after two years of wat. "When I last saw England 22 months ago they were still fair-haired boys in sweaters at the Horse Guards and on the Embankment. London was a sort f open-ail' gymnasium. And I returnad to find the streets filled with seasoned soldiers, mostly interested in what were'the best kind of warm things to wear In the trenches. This impermeability of the British spirit is hard to realise. In France everyone, down to the peasant reservo guarding a railroad track in the .Midi, feels the war to his fingertips. There is a single-mindedness about France, a heightening and tightening of the national morale that has a lift and a thrill to it. In England the national feeling expresses itself in entirely different ways. The nation seems to have put on good Scotch woollens, British warms, and the most impermeable form of macintoshes. They have deliberately shut out all sentient communication with the stirring feelings that pass from one country to another, from one side' of the war to the other, in the mysterious way national morale is affected at different stages of war. The British are just exactly what they were at all times, except they seem to hav9 improved the kind of impermeability with which they surround themselves.

TENACITY AND iMPERMEABiLI have always felt the Germans tool* 0% th« most tenacious enemy possible when they roused France to war. The oneness of the French, which has even been able to thrill the far reaches of our own country, is a wonderful thing to live with. But I am not so sure, since returning to England, but that this British impermeability is even more baffling. I cannot see what an enemy Is going to do to break through it. They admit they have made all sorts of military blunders, admit it most cheerfully, and name* Instances you may have forgotten. They go about London in a dark so thick my shoulders are bruised from bumping invisible people on the sidewalks. They go along laughing and cheery too, and if the Germans are congratulating themselves with the false idea that they havp got under tho British calm by their Zeppelin raids, let them disillusion themselves. Th* calm is real. There is no make-believe about it. People say gaily, "This is good Zep. weather," or "We ought to have a Taid to-night," and the others present pay no more attention than if they had said, "Rather foggy this evening." The British calm of two years agewas enough to drive you crazy—pure self-complacency it seemed. But it is not so to-day. Americans and Frenchmen of my acquaintance here say a consciousness of what it Is all about has at last gone through the entlra peoplo, but once there have, settled it comfortably in their mind and gone about their business. I got that, too, among those first Impressions which reveal the feeling of a country. The English people have evolutionised during this war. They are awake. But they have gone in so heavily for deadeners of outside influence that it does not present much to grasp. The same remarkable thing Is the same old free-spokenness, the every-man's-house-his-castle point of view that persists. Conscription seems to have left the old sense cf personal liberty intact. The first thing 1 saw when I arrived was a mass meeting in Trafalgar Square discussing the Increased price of food. Parades were there from the East End of London carrying banners denouncing food speculator*, and the language being used against those who are running things would have brought down the police on such a gathering In any other capital of the war. But not in London. You can say what you think here, shout it if you like, and th« hobby on the corner is Impermeable too. Hyde Park is as full of radical speakers as in peace time. I believe there are more now. many of them talking peace. Nobody bothers them. The crowds stand and listen in that non-committal way they show whether the King passes or whether someone denounces everything in sight. And then When the orator gets hoarse they desert him for the loudest llannel-mouth in earshot.

It is not that the Government has decided to let people get rid of their steam. For they do not care anything about the steam. It cannot Ret through the steamproof. Londoners and all good British subjects havi> always had their say, and a war for the national existence is not going to interfere with that inherited right of all trim liritons. They knowit is a war for national existence too mind you, but thai is all righu-they are going to h.ivo their sav just the same.

T read a little item in a newspaper to-day about a Canity .Magistrate who refused to give up a piece of his park f or a barrack, and when it was seized under the Defence of the Realm Act he went ,iown with an axe and knocked down things "as soon as they were put up. When it came up in due time in Court it was ffocideil the actio,, had been wrongly taken; and I have no doubt the County .Magistrate is down there timing and swearing ye, every time he looks out of the window and sees those barracks. | h.ivo no doubt he would knock down anyone who intimated be was not a true patriot

THE SPIRIT THAT IS BAFFLING THE GERMANS.

PEACE MOVEMENT MAKES LITTLE IMPRESSION.

but he was not going to have his property interfered with just the same. Somehow he squares the two ideas, and Englishmen to whom I pointed out the news item could not see anything remarkable about it.

PEACE AGITATORS UNMOLESTED

Just now, the peace agitators are very busy. In fact, they have grown bold and are holding meetings, particularly through the manufacturing parts of England, which are well attended. They are attracting sufficient attention so that the members of the Cabinet have decided they must go out on speech-making tours also, lest the people hear so much about peace they forget about war. It is all done in the most casual manner, nobodv in the least excited. No one really fears the peace party will get to clamouring too loud or get too much attention, but they want to keep a balance. Jiust from reading the newspapers I began to think there might be a rapidly growing peace party in England that might prove important. So I have been questioning in all sorts of quarters, from Downing Street to the factory districts surrounding the city and I soon realised that the peace party in England is the same old party that has been here -from tho start. It may have grown, but it seems to me to have shrunk. It has certainly made little impression on the great mass of the English people not already in the trades unions or radically inclined. I want to make a comparison on this topic of peace. Every correspondent coming from Germany always points out at some point in his copy that the German people want peace. They always add "honourable peace," but it comes to the same thing. The German people are evidently thinking about peace. The British people are not. Outside of the people with socialistic inclinations, who have always been for peace and have always spoken for it too. the British people are not giving any of their mental processes over to the contemplation of peace.

Tn fact, I have been astounded by flie length of time the English peo--1775 seem honestly to think the war is going to last. They have a pretty Fair idea of how much progress their army has made on the Somme this summer, and they realise that at this pace it might take some years to get the Germans out of France. All right, they accept. I told a man I thought the peace conference would be on by this time next year. He was an ordinary Londoner. "What, so soon?" he said in surprise. "But Kitchener said it would last only three years," I commented. "I'm afraid you misquote him, -unintentionally, no doubt," replied the Londoner. "Kitchener said the war would last three years. He did not say how much longer it would last." The French people have no hope of the war being over soon, and no one ever talks peace in ordinary conversation in France, but they do not look ahead to literally years of war as the English people seem to do. Leaving out of consideration how it could be paid for, they simply accept as a fact, that it is still going to be a long war, and that is an end to it.

I used to find the British attitude at the beginning of the war very trying. It seemed too complacent. You wanted to shake people into a sense of what was going on. Now T am lost in wonder at the calm acceptance of the .situation. No one is getting nervous. It is still going to be a long war, and there you are. I have gone into this state of mind at some length because it is a matter of very great importance. With an impermeable people like the British joined to a tenacious people like the French, Germany has two enemies on this end of Europe who are presenting a very formidable front. It is no grand and emptv facade either. The feeling is real and deep, and. as far as the British are concerned, since it is they I am writing about, they are much further off from peace than they were when I left here three or four months after the war began. The British lion has pulled himself together and dropped all nonsense. He is a much more dangerous animal now than he ever was before.

The streets or London are filled with those extra-territorial lions the Australians. New Zealanders, South Africans, and Canadians. I believe there must be some national purpose in letting sc manv of them have London leave. I have talked to many and the mor* thoughtful «av they feel a warming toward their mother country; say it as if they were rather surprised at themselves, too. From hern in large part I have gathered that feeling of a countrv, or rather an empire, that has at last shaken itself together and decided to do something about it. A shcrt time ago on the British front in France I was struck by the general Britishness of the whole army. Colonials and all. Here the physical contrast between the giant Colonials and the city type in conspicuous, but the general Britishness persists just the .same. c

This general attitude is not a inns- one is moved to admiration over—though I do not deny an admiration too—bnl it is „ thing f0 contemplate, because it will probably vi,h,r?' - than anythia * e,se do vith Hie bringing about of the end of mo wa r . Tina apparently natunl lotion of the English has got to be overcome. The cheerful soldiers with wo pairs of socks and felt linings heir boots have got to be made mor" uncomfortable somehow Zepnelins '!« no good. Food goes up on account of the work of submarines and people complain, but having com•lamed foe, they have don? the> Knt.sh duty. The i S s„ e ROM no fur *_

Nailed down, the present temper ol England w.is curiously enough express, by Maximilian Harden in his A'knnft. If. has boon translated her! •'"id silently nodded over. Heir iTir ";n said that the real objects „f fV Allies are:

First to brine fWmr.nv into line with the political system of \W;fom M'rope, and to end what thn Allies consider to ho tho survival in Co,. many of bellicose feudalism

Second, the introduction into Germany of Parliamentary government, so that the people of Germany will really have something to say in the government of the country. For the English people to carry their thought so far afield as to ponder over the issue of a problem like this shows in itself a decided awakening under the skin. Another evidence of this is the interest being taken here in the articles of The World's special correspondent in Germany. Herbert Bayard Swops. They are being printed in full here in the Daily News, and, though Swope has hit the even line of fair reporting of conditions in Germany, the English people read it with understanding and without scorning any of his conclusions showins points in favour of Germany. They were particularly interested in what Swope had to say about the increased desire for popular government in Germany.

This is a rather far cry from the attitude of two years ago. People here want the truth. The English have put away that nonsense and settled down to a long stretch of war. I have not talked to anyone in or out of the army who has the least idea the war will be over under two more years. From that estimates go up to 20. I do not explain this attitude. I simply report it. Whatever it may portend, there It is. Tho Briton has two pairs of socks and a felt lining in his boots, and what with his "British warm" and real waterproof he is encased in armour against peace talk.