The Stratford Evening Post WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED THE EGMONT SETTLER THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 23, 1916. THE REAL BRITAIN.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXI, Issue 99, 23 November 1916, Page 4

The Stratford Evening Post WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED THE EGMONT SETTLER THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 23, 1916. THE REAL BRITAIN.

In a now pamphlet issued by the Victoria League, Sir Edward Cook tells us in quite the right way (says the Christchurch Press) something of what Britain has done in the war. The rally of the free Dominions to Britain's side has been a wonderful and moving thing, but it is not more thrilling than the way in which "the British, people at home, whose Government had striven to the last moment to maintain peace, yet at the call of duty and necessity cast themselves with lull force of temper into the task of organising for war, and threw in their whole weight, in blood, in treasure, and in industry, in order to meet the great emergency." England, as Cavonr said in a famous passage, ''has always beguu with forces inferior to her real means of action," and the full extent of her effort is liable to h> obscured by the gradual nature of its development. First and foremost is the great work of the Navy, and it must be remembered that the Kavy of to-day is vastly greater and more powerful even than the mighty Flee! that- was aide to nsume command nl the r'eri Ihc instant that war was dc-

clarecl. Even more wonderful, this writer declares, is the development of the British Army. One finds a difficulty in realising that before the war nobody expected that Britain would have to consider a greater problem, in the event of a European war, than the transport of a couple of hundred thousand troops to France. Long ago the British Army in France was ten times as great as the British Army in August, 1911 : over four million British soldiers have gone to the war. More wonderful still is the cheerful acceptance of conscription by Bri-i tain which for generations have believ-, ed intensely in individual freedom and; irresponsibility, and had made a boast! of her difference in this respect from Continental nations. Nothing has so deeply impressed foreign observers, than this shedding by Britain of her: ancient prejudices and errors. Required to meet the extension of ivar-i fare to the air, she lias buili numberless aeroplanes and railed imo bcingj a multitude of the finest aviators in, the world. What she has done in the; way of making shells and guns is beyond measurement. Her people have ( found hundreds of millions of pounds for the prosecution- of the war, audi have borne without flinching taxation on a scale never before considered possible. "What is behind all, these achievements and the tremendous figures that measure them?", the. Press asks, and in answer says: "Nothing but the spirit of the men and women of England. We talk of millions of shells, and hundreds of millions of pounds, and new squadrons! of battleships, and millions of soldiers :i but these things, the colonial m'ust never forget, are but ways of talking of the energy, valour, and patience of the great nation at the head of the British Empire. This, and not a decrepit Motherland, is the Britain with which we shall have to do business in the days to come—not the decadent England of German dreams and of colonial self-sufficiency— but the England of whom Emerson had a true vision sixty years ago:—'l see her not dispirited, not weak, but well remembering that she has seen dark days before; indeed, with a kind of instinct that she sees better in a cloudy day. and that in storm of battle and calamity she has a secret vigour and a pulse like a cannon. I see her in her old age, not decrepit, but young, and still daring to believe in her power of endurance and expansion. Seeing this, I say, All hail! Mother of nations, mother of heroes, with strength still equal to the time.' "