THE GREAT KHAKI ARMY.

Taihape Daily Times, Issue 220, 28 May 1917, Page 6

THE GREAT KHAKI ARMY.

CLASSIC TRADITIONS. A FRENCHMAN’S IMPRESSIONS M .Paul Birault, editor of the Bulletin des Armees de la Republique, who has returned from a visit to the British front, writes as follows: In the course of my visit I had the opportunity of seeing a Tank that bad just landed on the Continent, and whose mechanics were busy adjusting the motor. A Tank seen from the outside looks just like an antediluvian monster. It has the appearance of an iron beast capable of overturning everything in its path. But the inside, on the contrary, is a perfect | mechanical gem. One has only to look at the brightly polished steel and copper parts, the cylinders, and quivering pistons to see that the strength cf the monster is throughout the work of intelligence. This impression the Tank gave is exactly what I again experienced in looking at the British Army. The power which is able to wipe out the German trenches is only brutal in appearance. In reality its force is made up of intelligence. Its aspect is that of a formidable war machine, but, regarded at close quarters, it is found to be .organism, each part of which has been solidly tempered, then smoothed and polished until the metal has acquired the beauty and finish of a work of art modelled by a goldsmith.

In going into the trenches the French soldier is justly proud of his

appearance as a cave-dweller; lie even preserves the mud which covers his ■uniform. The Briton seemed to be in a greater hurry to resume a hr man semblance. Perhaps this is or'" in appearance. In any case.l was r "Tick with the condition of the ’ cars the batteries, ammunition wagons, - itomobiles, and even the field kite' ms; In a word, of all the material of the second line. As I visited the British lines in the ■character of a special representative

,cf the poilus, I was allowed to witness a battle conducted by a staff captain. I saw all its phases, from the artillery preparation up to the wave of assault. On the following day, at the general’s table, I was asked what had made the strongest impression upon me. I replied: “The kitchens of the Royal Dublin Fusiliers.” My reply provoked laughter, and it was regarded as a French joke. It was nothing of the sort, however. Amongst all these soldiers who rivalled each other in courage those who 'seemed to me the finest were the cooks, who, unarmed under the shell-fire, polished up their pots and pans as if their kitchens on wheels were appearing in a review.

In the village to the rear the soldiers hardly mix in the life of the civilians. There remains, however, the link of small dealings and daily services which are rendered between good neighbours. The military village of wooden huts and canvas meet at the fountain with the inhabitants of the stone and brick houses, and sometimes a light is borrowed as a symbol of hospitality. Though the villagers no longer come to their doors to see the troops .pass, there is unabated in-

terest in the components of the great British Army. I can still hear the

tone of assurance with which a little fisher boy, very diminutive in size, remarked to his brother, who was even smaller than himself, as he pointed to the men with broad shoulders aud cocked hats, like the musketeers of long ago: “Take a good look at them so as to know them again. Those i are the Australians.” And the child, were he to live to be the oldest fisherman on the coast, will never forget the soldiers of that great Empire that came from the other end of the world to cheek with us the invasion of the barbarians.