INVISIBLE ACTIVITIES.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXV, Issue 95, 24 April 1915, Page 4

INVISIBLE ACTIVITIES.

])r. F. W. Ward, the weil-knowu journalist of Sydney, who is on a visit to England, Aviates a hue article to the Telegraph at tile end oi February, in tin l course of which lie says:—Only our soldiers and sailors realise the war in the vivid way that circumstances force so many persons in our Allies’ countries to realise it. These islands stand almost as clear of the war in

its actual phases as they would do if they belonged to neutral outsiders. We see the wounded, as 1 have said : we also see hundreds of thousands of Belgian refugees, brave, patient-look-ing families, uphold by an invincible belief that Britain will see them triumphantly through their trouble; and we see “Kitchener’s Army” drilling everywhere; but we do not see the war itself. Indeed, the movements of the troops in these islands are to a great extent concealed from the eyes of the nation. We know that the War Office commandeers the railways as it requires to do, and that it has taken over a big fleet of merchantmen, but for the most part this transport service— the most wonderfully efficient thing of its kind ever organised—is impenetrably veiled. The manufacture of guns, equipment, and munitions goes on night and day on a colossal scale; but all the activity is invisible .except to those engaged in it. Not only do we fail to realise adequately what is going on in North France and elsewhere, we also fail to grasp what it being done here. Certainly we read about the war in the censored. press, and on the basis of that reading, talk about it'among ourselves; but the task laid upon our imagination is greater than it can discharge. Remember that the worst things that happen in battles fought Avitli modern weapons cannot he told to a general community in newspaper print; there! is an unofficial but imperative censor-j ship exercised by those who write orj edit narratives of human slaughter; the horrors have to he softened in the descriptions; “war is hell”— and! hell is unpain table.