ANZACS IN EDINBURGH.

Taihape Daily Times, 12 November 1917, Page 6

ANZACS IN EDINBURGH.

\ —— CONTEMPT FOR GUIDE-BOOKS.

‘ ‘Say ’Jock/ which is the best way to the Castle?”

The speaker was an Anzac. We were standing at a corner near the Y.M.C.A. in Princes Street last Sunday morning. Now, I am not an Anzac, but (in the Anzac opinion) I am the next best breed —a “Jock” —and

so we chummed up on the spot. He was just over on short leave from ] France —he had only arrived in Edinburgh that morning, in fact —and as I was in nearly the same desolate case, we were glad of each other’s society.

Together we climbed to the Castle, and on the way my Anzac friend

spoke cf many things., but on one subject he was. particularly enthusiastic, and his enthusiasm grew as the day wore on. He had fallen in love with Edinburgh since he got his first glimpse of the grey towers of the Castlp seen dimly through the mist of the early morning. He came from New and there must have been several hundreds of his countrymen on leave in Edinburgh that week-end. My A nz ac and I spent a couple of hours in the Castle—“some place,” he called it—and I think he will carry with him for a long time the memory of the view we got from the Argyle tower; over the tumbled and myriad chimney pots and wreathing blue smoke we could see the green and pleasant country, and, to the north,, the great estua,ry of the Forth and its islands.

The Ansae on Tgave in Edinburgh is great on sight-seeing, hut he has a fine contempt for guide-books. He wanders round and discovers places in the off-hand colonial style. He will climb Arthur’s Seat (as far as he is now allowed to go), or the Scott Monument, visit and inspect the supposed site of the illfated Riazio’s bloodstains, and generally the sights of the city, hut he will not “do” Edinburgh as the tourist used to. The Anzac works on no fixed plan, and yet he manages to see everything that is worth seeing; but when you meet him he never seems to be going anywhere. CITY OF STATUES. The Anzacs call Edinburgh the City of Statues. My friend and I in-'

spected many of these memorials last j He insisted on reading the inscriptions on each. Afterwards we sat in the sunshine in Princes Street Gardens. All was peace and quiet there under the serene old Castle, and it was hard to realise that the guns were roaring and men were dying In France. It is this peacefulness of Edinburgh which is one of its chief attractions, for these colonial soldiers are most of them direct from the inferno of the latest Ypres battle. The serene quiet of the ancient city acts like balm oh war-racked nerves. While we were sitting in the gardens another New Zealand soldier came and sat beside us. He related an incident which brought home to us the tragedy of war. . While he was in France he made friends with an Edinburgh lad serving in a Scottish regiment They had met in hospital, and on going up the “line” again they corresponded and kept touch with each other. They met in a rest camp shortly before the Anzac came on leave and the Edinburgh lad asked the colonial to call at his home and

tell -his people that he was expecting to get leave himself very soon. The Anzac promised. He "(Tailed on his chum’s parents the day he arrived in Edinburgh, only to find deep gloom in the home. A telegram had, arrived that very morning announcing that the son had been killed in action the day the Anzac left France. As he said, he could do little to comfort the heart-broken old folk, but they listened eagerly to all that he could telf them about their son and his life in France, and they heaped kindness cn the colonial who had beeen his f: lend. —Scotsman.