THE FIGHTING FACE

Taihape Daily Times, Issue 220, 24 May 1917, Page 7

THE FIGHTING FACE

THE tJir-iiUU OF \idoni iNOW

AJBKOAI*.

I was always interested in laceti. Even as a boy I found I could detect the moods and proclivities of my preceptors by studying the face ("writes Austin Harrison, editor ,of "The English Review," in the "Daily Mirror.") Perhaps face reading is an instinct. It is certainly an amusement, and sometimes I think the national face is a better barometer than all the leading articles in Britain.

■ The French physiognomy has completely changed since 1914. In place of the Gaillard, the Roublarde, the somewhat cynical, devil-may-care expression of the Parisian before the war, the poilu to-day has a strikingly steady, calm, concentrated 'look as of a man w.ho has found himself out and is satisfied. On les aura (we will get them) is the expression of France of 1916. All the Roman in the race lies stamped on their features, and perhaps the most astonishing part of it is the quite new French immobility. Of nerves, not a trace! Gesticulation is curiously less. The French man and woman look very hard and true. What they call the "gesture" of war shines, like an inspiration, from their faces.

We are reputed a phlegmatic people —"lmpossible to tell what an Englishman thinks," foreigners said of us; I don't think they would speak like that now. Do you remember the autumn of 1914? I do. Our faces were long; men walked about with clenched jaws; the policemen in the streets wore a "grumpy" look; the stamp of incipient neurasthenia was unmistakable.

And the winter! I shall never forget the expression of the sailors at Portsmouth in the early days of the submarines. Jack looked worried, put about, pale, restless, with a haunting look in the eyes, rather like the "specials" in London the day of the second 2epp raid. Young men looked o, id, women were careworn; the tube, the omnibus were not entertaining places.

But one day I knew submarines were O.K. by accidentally meeting half a dozen salors in a "pub." Not that we spoke or that they spoke. But one of them put down -his glass, and, looking highly pleased with himself, ordered another half-pint—"to poor old Fritz!"

That was enough. I knew then. Since that day the sailors' faces have got better-looking every month. A fact. I never see a sailor now that I am not struck by his good looks. He's fit as the fittest, and knows it. Nothing succeeds like success. And all over England our looks have gone up. Where is the old hang-dog droop? The listless gait? The former cavity in the'face? The servile eye? The protruding-teeth man? The washout stare? You cannot find them. Go where you please, you meet hard, keen, brave eyes to-day; mouths that shut firm. Our diaphragms are high tc-day, with the result that men walk erect, elastically, like Elizabethans. The peculiar insular exyrcssioniessness su typical of us lias gone. The national face is now lull of character. The eyes glow, lips smile. I don't believe England ever looked so young, so liar's, so bonny as she does in the third winter of the war.

I see intelligence to-day in the face of every second man, something quite new, something at once beautiful and purposeful. The la-di-da soldier is no more. "Who are you?" I said to a fine young- chap who came to see me. "Your former office boy,' 'he said. "Good Heavens!" I replied; "and now?"