THE NEW ARMY IN TRAINING.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LVII, Issue 232, 10 March 1915, Page 7

THE NEW ARMY IN TRAINING.

TERRITORIAL BATTALIONS AND A CONCLUSION. THE CORPS WITH A PAST. (By Rudyard Kipling, in the Daily i Telegraph.) Billeted troops are difficult to get it. There are thousands of them in a little old towns by the side of an even_older park up the London road, but to And a particular battalion is like ferreting unstopped burrows. "The Umpty-Umpth, were you looking for?" said a private, in charge of a sidecar. "We're in Enty-Enth. Only came iu last week. I've never seen this place before. It's pretty. Hold on! There's u postman. He'll know." He, too, was in khaki, bowed between mail bags, and his accent was of a far and coaly county. "I'm none too sure," said he; "but I think I saw " Here a third man cut in:

"Yon's t' battalion marchin' into t' park now. Roon! Happen tlia'll catch 'em."

They turned out to be Territorials with a history behind them; but that I didn't know till later and their band and cyclists. Very polite were tho6c rearrank cyclists—who pushed their loaded I machines with one vast hand qiiece. They were strangers, they said. They had only come here a lew days ago. But they knew the South well. They had been in Gloucestershire, which was a veiy nice southern place. Then their battalion, I hazarded, was of northern extraction. They admited that I might- go as far as that—their speech betraying their native town at every rich word. "Iluddcrsfield, of course?" I said, to make them out with it. "Bolton," said one at last. Being in uniform, the pitman could not destroy the impertinent civilian. "Ah, Bolton!" I returned. "All cotton, arn't you?" "Some coal," he answered -gravely. There is notorious rivalry 'twixt coal and cotton in Bolton, but I wanted to see him practice the self-cnotrol that the Army is alxvays teaching. As I have said, he and his companions were most polite, but the total of their information, boiled and peeled, was that they had just come from Bolton way: might at any moment be sent somewhere else; and tiiey liked Gloucestershire in the south. A spy could not have learned much less.

The battalion halted, and moved off by companies for further evolutions. One could see they were more than used to drill arms; a hardened., tlnck-necked ; thin-flanked, deep-chested lot, dealt with quite faithfully by their sergeants, and altogether abreast of their work. Why, then, this reticence? AVliat had tliev to he ashamed of, these big Bolton folk without an address? Where was their orijerlv room?

There wei'e many ovJerly rooms in the!. little old town, most of them in l bv-lanes) ; less than one car wide. I found what I wanted and —this was north-country all over—a private who volunteered to steer me to headquarters through the tricky southern streets. Ho was communicative, and told me a good deal about typhoid-inoculation and musketry practice, which accounted for only six companies being on parade. But surely they could not be ashamed of that. GUARDING A RAILWAY. I unearthed their skeleton at last ia a peaceful, gracious five-hundred-year-old hou"« that looked on to lawns and cut hedges bounded by age-old red brick walls—such a perfumed and dreaming place as one would choose for the setting of some even-pulsed English love-tale of the days before the Avar. Oflicers were billeted in the low-ceiled, shiny-floored rooms full of books and flowers. "And now," I asked, when I had toid the tale of the uncommunicative cyclist, "what, is the matter with your battalion ?" They laughed cruelly at me. "Matter!" said they. "We're just off three months of guarding railways. After that n man would'nt trust his own mother. You don't mean to say our cyclists let you know where we've come from last." "No, they didn't," I replied. "That was what worried me. I assumed you'd all committed murders, and had been sent here to live it down." Then they told me what guarding a line really means. How men wake and walk, with only troop trains to keep them company, all the night long on windy embankments or under still more windy bridges; how they sleep behind three sleepers up-ended or a bit of tin; or, if they are lucky, in a plate-layer's hut; how their food comes to them slopping across the square-headed ties that lie in wait to twist a man's ankle after dart; how they stand in blown coal dust of good-yards trying to watch five linos of trucks at," once; how fools of all classes pester the lonely pickets, whose orders are to hdld up motors for inquiry, and then write silly letters to the War Office about it. How nothing ever happens through the long weeks but infallibly would if the patrols were t-alcen off. And they had one refreshing story of a workman who at fl in the 1 morning, which is no auspicious hour io jest with Lancashire, took a short cut to his work by ducking under some goods • waggons, and when challenged by the ■ sentry replied, posturing on all fours: ■ "800, I'm a German!" Whereat the up- . right sentry fired, unfortunately missed ; hi in, and tlien gave him the butt across . his ass's head, so that his humor, and

verv nearly bis life, terminated. After which the sentry was seldom seen to smile, but frequently heariT to murmur! "All should hev slipped t' baggonet into liim." PRIDE AND PREJUDICE. "So you see," said the, oflicers, in conclusion, "you musn't be surprised that our men would'nt tell you much." "I begin to see," I said. "How many of you are coal and how many cotton?" "Two-thirds coal and one-third cotton, roughly. It keeps the men deadly keen. An operative isn't going to give up while a pitman goes on; and very much vice versa." "That's class prejudice," said I. "It's most useful," said they. The officers fheniKclves seemed to be interested in coal or cotton, and had known their men intimately on the civil side. If your orderly room sergeant or your quartermaster has been your trusted clerk or. foreman for 10 or 12 years, and if eight out of a dozen sergeants have controlled pitmen and machinists above and below ground, and SO per cent, of those pitmen and machinists are privates ill the companies, your regiment works with something of the precision of a big I business.

Tt was all new talk to mo, for I had not yet met a northern Territorial battalion with the strong pride of its stron;;, town behind it. Where were they when . t.lii' war came? How hail tliev equipped themselves? I wanted to hear the tale. I Tt. was worth listening to as told with Xnrlh country joy of life and the iloinn of tilings in that soft down-country honse of the uniroubled ei'iitnries. Like everyone else, tliev were expecting anything hut the war. Hadn't even begun their animal camp. Then the thinfr eaine, and Tiolton rose as 11110 man and woman to (it, out its battalion. There was a lady who wanted a fairly larjri sum of money for the men's extra footgear. Slic set aside a morning to collect it, and inside the hour came home | with nearly twice her needs, and spent

the rest of the time trying to make people take back fivers at least out of .tenners. And the big hauling firms flung horses and transport at them and at the Government, often refusing any price, or, when it was paid, turning it into the war funds. What the battalion wanted it had but to ask for. Once it was short of, say, towels. An officer approached the head of a big firm, with 110 particular idea lie woulil get more than a few dozen from that quarter. •And how many towels d'you want?" said the head of the firm. The officer suggested a globular thousand. "I think you'll do better with twelve hundred," was the curt answer. "They-re ready out yonder. Get 'em." An in this style Bolton turned out her battalion. ' Then the authorities took it and strung it by threes and fives along several score miles of railway track; and it had only just been reassembled, and it had been inoculated for typhoid. Consequently, they said (but all office! s are like mothers and motor car owners) it wasn't up to what it whould be in a little time. In spite of the cyclist, I had a good look at the deep-chested battalion in the park, and after getting their musketry figures,* it seemed to tne that very soon it might be worth looking at by more prejudiced persons than myself.

The next day I read that this battalion's regular battalion in the field had distinguished itself by a piece of work which, in other wars, would have been judged heroic. Bolton will read it, not without remarks, and other towns who love Bolton more or less will say that if all the truth could come out their regiments had done as well. Anyway, the result will be more men—pitmen, mill hands, clerks, checkers, weighers, winders, and hundreds of those sleek, wellgroomed business chaps whom one used to meet in the Midland hotels, protesting that war was out of date. These latter develop surprisingly in a camp atmosphere. I recall one raging in his army shirt-sleeves at a comrade who had derided his principles. "I am a blanky pacificist," he hissed, "and I'm proud of it, and—and I'm going to make you one before I've finished with you!" THE SECRET OF THE SERVICES. Pride of city, calling, class, and creed imposes standards and obligations which hold men above thousands at a pinch, and steady them through long strain. One meets it in the New Army at every turn, from the picked Territorials who slipped across Channel last night to the six-weeks-old Service battalion maturing itself in the mud. It is balanced by the ineradicable English instinct to under-' state, detract, and decry—to mask the thing done by loudly drawing attention to the things undone. The more one sees of the camps the more one is filled with facts and figures of joyous significance, which will become clearer as the days lengthen; and the less ' one hears of the endurance, decency, self-sacrifice, and utter devotion which have made, and are hourly making, this wonderful new world. The camps take this for granted—else why should any man be there at all? He might have gone on with his business, or —watched "soccer." But having chosen to do his bit, he does It, and talks as much about his motives as he would of his religion or his loveaffairs. He is eloquent over the shortcomings of the authorities, more pessimistic as to the future of his next neignbor battalion than would be safe to print and lyric on his personal needs —baths and drying-rooms for choice. But when the grousing gets beyond a certain point —say at 3 a.m., in steady Wet, with tlit; tent-pegs drawing like false teeth — the nephew of the insurance agent asks the cousin of the baronet to inquire of the son of the fried-fish vendor what the stevedore's brother and the tutor of tli ? public school joined the Army for. Then they sing "Somewhere the Sim is Shining" till the Sergeant Ironmonger's Assistant cautions them to drown in silence or the Lieutenant Telephone-appliances manufacturer will speak to them in the morning.

The Now Armies have not yet evolved tlieir typical private n.c.0., and officer, though ono can see them shaping. They are humorous because, for all our long faces, we are the only genuinely humorous race on earth; but they all know for true .that there are no excuses in the Service. "Jf there were," said a three-' month-old under-gardener-private to me, '■' what 'ud become of Discipline." They are already setting standards for the coming millions, and have sown little sprouts of regimental tradition which may grow into age-old trees. 'ln one corps, for example, though no dubbin is issued a jnan loses his name for parading with dirty boots. He looks down scornfully on the next battalion where they are not expected to achieve the impossible. . Tn another—an ex-Ouards sersergeant brought 'cm up by hand —the drill is rather high-class. In a third they fuss about records for route-marching, and men who fall out have to explain themselves to their sweating companions. This is entirely right. They are all now in the Year One, and the meanest of them may be an ancestor of whom, regimental posterity will say: 'They were giants in those days!"

THE REAL QUESTION. j This, much we can realise, even though we are close to it. The old safe instinct saves us from triumph and exultation. But what will be the position in years to come of the young man who lias deliberately elected to outcaste himself from this all-embracing "brotherhood' What of his family, and, above all, what of his descendants, when the books have been closed and the last balance struck of sacrifice and sorrow in every Lamlet, village, parish, suburb, city, shire, district, province, and Dominion throughout the Empire. ♦Note—Thanks to the minature rifle clubs fostered by Lords Roberts a certain number of recruits in all the armies come to their regiments with a certain knowledge of sighting, rifle-handling and the general details of good shooting, especially at snap and disappearing work.