HOW THE WAR MAKES MEN.

Taranaki Daily News, 9 October 1915, Page 12 (Supplement)

HOW THE WAR MAKES MEN.

CAIRO THE WONDERFUL. An interesting letter has been received from Lance-Corporal W. J. Hill, a member of the sth Reinforcements. It was written from the base camp in Egypt prior to the departure of the writer for Gallipoli. After describing the great hospitals and the striking spectacle presented by the big wards full of damaged and crippled, he says: "They are all cheerful, all optimistic, and their one great wish is to get back to the front. Bits of boys of a few months ago are now seasoned warriors. Not bold, swaggering blusterers, but just quiet men who have seen and done things and are anxious to do still more in the future. Go amongst them and listen to their talk. 'Were you at Cape Helles?' A will say. 'Was I not?' B will reply. And then the whole business will be gone over again, not boastfully, but quietly and calmly. They'll swap experiences, and two men (total strangers of five minutes ago) will become as brothers, and all because they had fought in the same area a month or so before. Australia and New Zealand may well be proud of their soldiers' prowess in the field. There are no blow-hards or larrikins among those who have been at Gallipoli. The man who says that colonials have no sense of responsibility as regards to the British Empire is a liar. Oh, if New Zealand could only realise how her sons (mere boys) have been changed • into men in but a few months, how her outlook would change! How she would worship them, and how few real men would put pleasure before duty and turn their backs on the training camp! I know dozens of the wounded here whom I knew a year ago as lads whose one aim in life appeared to be flashiness and irresponsibility. Now what a change there is all over them—they are quiet, calm men. Their splendid example is going to help all the reinforcements. No New Zealand mother should worry about her son. He may have been wild and reckless in New Zealand—but the trenches are the right antidote. . . .

"On the parade ground there is a quiet earnestness among the men, and nowhere is there any excitement. .Daily we see batches of men march out of camp on their way to Gallipoli, and not once have I heard ,a cheer. It is the same with the reinforcements. They march in, and ten minutes later are swallowed up, just small companies in the great mass of machinery which Prussian greed has set in motion."