MY BOY.

Taranaki Daily News, 11 December 1915, Page 12 (Supplement)

MY BOY.

. A MOTHER'S THOUGHTS. A REVERIE OF HOME. Sitting here at home in a placid English shire in this sweet russeting September I know the geography of Gnllipoli as few know it. I have never been there, but I have given my son to tho fighting in the Dardanelles. My son is fighting for this quiet England among those crags and cruel mountains, and I am glad.

When he went off in his khaki and his brown leather—no flashing sword in his belt like his forefathers —several women showed that they pitied me. I am not sure that I needed pity. I needed envy, and perhaps pity as well. I know I needed sympathy. There is a little war here, down here in this house at .the end of the lane, here among the elms and the gables, and all this golden leafy peace. It is a little war in my heart. It is a war of wishes. No one who has .not the honor and pride—and the poignant anguish—of being a British officer's mother, .the mother of a fighting boy, can know quite what this little war is. WAR OF WISHES. It is a war of wishes. It is a battle between something in my heart that bids me to long to fly over there and bring hi'm back, and something in my heart that bids me rejoice that lie is there with his mind set on victory for dear England and his face set to the foe.

Sometimes I would that I could fly over to that craggy peninsula of Gallipoli just for a few minutes to peep at him as I used to about IS years ago, to see that he is warm and safe—no, I do not-want him to be , safe. What has an English mother to d 6 with safety —now —in her thoughts about her son —her boy? Mrs. B 's son is safe. She drove over to see me after Boy had gone off to the Dardanelles. Her 6on is a first-class clerk, or something like that, in a Government department. He leaves office every day at 5 o'clock. You can set- your watch by his stepping —well wrapped up—from the portals of hia office. His mother has no anxiety about him. That is, one would think not. She does not go down on her knees at night in the solitude of her room and pray for his safety and for the victorious issue of his cause. He does not seem to have a cause. His boots are shone every morning and his meals are set for him with icy regularity, with minute precision. She is able to see that he has the right thickness of •woollen wear for every tinge of change in the temperature. September is very trying to her. When he has that tiny touch of dry cough that comes to him when he has smoked too many cigarettes, it is to her as a tragedy deep and dark. I was a "silly mother" —so I am told —in those far-off days before the war. What a long time it is; only about 13 months. It has been well said that no time seems so long ago as yesterday. Tragedy! Woollens! No, Ido not envy Mrs, B the safety of her son, Yet sometimes —r WHEN HE COMES BACK! The mellow September sunlight is touching the creeper round the gables and flecking the lawns with silent falling leaves, red and gold. The 'old gardener—too old to fight—wants to cut and trim away from the windows, and I look up and say, "Yes—yes, Holmes, do as you like." Sometimes I do not seem to mind how things look in the gardens and round the old home, and then I am seized with a swift determination to have everything just so, that his eyes may be gladdened when he comes home from the Dardanelles.

That morning--the day my boy went off—the maids seemed to pity me. Yet they saw the truth, the country' 3 need, the glory of a strong youth in the fight, this greatest of all fights. That morning was long weeks ago. Then I received the news of the landing at Suvla Bay. It seems such a long way oft'. Down here, among the old oak and silver and rooks of his mother's home, the same day as that on which he set out of the trenches. It has been done time and again. That, is from the front in Flanders and France. But that is not the way at the great front where my boy is, out in the Dardanelles. Such a distance—great tumbling seas and vast lands and other climates—so far from his home to him. I thank God I have a son at the front—and such a front. It is most difficult to see time in its due proportion, especially for mothers. Some things of last week seem much further away than these days when I nursed him in my arms and taught him the English language. English is his mother tongue in a deep, special I, his mother, taught him his first accents. Long ago? No. It was only yesterday. Time races away. The cradle and two smiling eyes looking up At me. Boyhood and his first suit of tweeds and knickerbockers. School and hopes and fears. College and hopes and fears.. The big, fascinating outlook to the future as he stood with sunny face on the threshold of a career. Plans for learning, for fashioning a career for the boy. i

A child yesterday. Now a man, a fighting man. How'l remembered when he was a very little mite that sublime, simple verse fr»m the early chapters of Genesis, when Eve bore a son and she said, "I have gotten a Man from the Lord." Yes, that is it. a man. He is a man gone forth to the fight. I cannot help thinking at this moment of a verse of Kipling's his father quoted to him a year or two ago-'— Stand to your work and be wise, Certain of sword and pen, Neither as children nor gods, But as men in a world of men,

When I crooned over him as a baby, and dreamed soft golden dreams of his future, how could I hav 4 e dreamed for him aught so great as .this? A man striking blows. Striking blows in the greatest fight of all the ages. How small the Vikings, the warriors of Charlemagne, the Normans with their few miles of land, even the daring sea heroes of Elizabeth in their frigates and their galleons. My Boy. My Boy in the middle of the world." My Boy fighting in the hottest vortex of the toughest struggle of mankind. \et in a selfish moment, a montent of the weak woman, if I could stretch out my arms and call him back !