BRITAIN AT WAR.

Taranaki Daily News, 31 December 1915, Page 9

BRITAIN AT WAR.

THE HEW BRITISH SOLDIER. AS THE AMERICAN SEES HIM. The whole British Empire—to say nothing of the rest of the world—is keenly interested m the new armies which, under Lord Kitchener's iron hand, have suddenly come into existence, and have just given the first proof of their quality in the history-making attaek on the German trenches a few weeks ago. Mr. E. Alexander Powell i 3 one of the most brilliant of American wai correspondents, and in Scribner's for October he publishes a study of great interest of i the British soldier of to-dar. It is picturesque in style, keen in vision, ana has the merit of being absolutely impartial in judgment. It will interest our readers to see what aspect; when seen ■ through American spectacles, the latest and greatest of British armies wears. A TYPE OF NEW SOLDIERY. Mr. Powell starts out by tiking a solitary figure—that of the Prince of Wales —as the type and representative of the new British soldier; "Along a road in the outskirts of that French town which is the British headi quarters a youth was running. He was of considerably less thai medium height, and fair-haired and very slender. One would have described him as a nicelooking boy. He wore a jersey anil white running-shorts, which left his knees bare, and he was bare-headed. Shoulders back and chest well out, he jogged along at the steady dog-trot adopted byathletes .and prize-fighters who are in training. Sow in ordinary times there is 'not anything particularly remarkable in seeing, a scantily-clad youth"' dogtrotting along a country road. You assume that he is training tor a crosscountry event, or for a seat in a 'varsity shell, or for the feather-weight championship, and you let it go a,t that. But these are not ordinary times in France, and ordinary young men in runningi shorts are not" permitted to trot along the roads as they list in tTye immediate vicinity of British headquarters. Even if you travel, as I did. in ,a large grey car, with an officer of the \French General Stpff for companion, yjpu are halted every few minutes by a sentry, who turns the business end of a r?9e in your direction, and demands to see your papers. But no one challenged rhe young man in the running-shorts, or .asked to see his papers. Instead, whenever a soldier caught sight of him that soldiei clicked ty's heels together ani stood rigidly at attention. "After you had observed the furious effect which the appearance oif. this * young man produced on the military of all ranks it suddenly struck you/ that his face was strargely familiaT. -Then you all at once remembered thafi you had seen it hundrc Is of times inj the • magazines and the illustrated pafeers. „ Under, it was the caption. His Rckyal Highness the Prince of Wales.' Tiiat . young; man will some day, if he lives, sit in an ancient chair in Westminster 'Abbey, and the Archbishop of Canteif- ; - <bury will place a crown upon his head), ' and his picture will appear on coins an<3 : , postage stamps in use over half tlife ■" globe .'I "Xow the future King of England— Edward VIII. they will doubtless call liim—is not getting up at daybreak and reeling off half a dozen miles or so because he particularly enjoys it. He is doing it with an end in view. He is doing it for precisely the same reason that the prize-fighter does it—he is training for s-battle- To me there was something , wonderfuly suggestive and characteristic in the sight of that young man plug(ring doggedly along the country road. . He seemed to epitomise the spirit whicl* 7 I found to exist along the whole length i of the British battle-line. . "The British soldier has at last come ' to a 'realisation of the terrible gravity ' of the situation which faces him. You don't' hear him singing 'Tipperarv' any more or boasting about what he is going to do when he gets to Berlin. He has come to have a most profound respect for the fighting qualities of the men in the spiked helmets. He knows that he, an amateur boxer, as it were, is up against the world's heavyweight professional champion. He has already found out, to his cost and to his very great disgust, that his opponent has no intention of being hampered by the rules laid down by the late Marquis of Queensberry. One.cof these days, therefore, -when h$ gets quite ready, he is going to give that opponent the surprise of his life by landing on him with both feet, i. spikes 'on his shoes, and brass knuckles on ..his fingers. Meanwhile, like the young prince, in the running-short 3, he has buckled down with grim determination to the task of getting himself into condition. THE WONDERFUL THING DONE. "It should be borne in mind that the "i * : British did not begin the building of their war-machine until about twelve months ago, while thejftefcinan organisa* tion is the result <&&pvaTd of half a t century of unceasing thought, experiment and endeavor. But what the Bri- > tish have accomplished in those twelve y:- months is one of the marvels of military history. Lord Kitchener came to a War Office which had long been in the hands / of lawyers and politicians. Not only >; ■- vas he expected to remodel an institution which had become a national joke, tut, at the same time, to raise a huge "volunteer army. •In order to raise this army he had 4; ~ have recourse to 'business methods He employed a clever advertising spe- * eialist to cover the walls and newsof the United Kingdom with all iwfenuuraer of striking advertisements, some ■' iK pleading, some bullying, some caustic in |M|- tone, by which he has proved that, given Sfjjv patriotic impulse, advertising for people l|P r to go to war is just Ike advertising for people to buy automobiles or. shavingW, -soap or smoking tobacco. It was not f-r-'-i-' soothing to British pride—but it got the £?> men. Late in the spring, after half a JagSr-year or more of training, during which they were worked as a negro teamster works a mule, those men were marched £•;, aboard transports and sent across the /■ ' Channel. England now has an army of "-, approximately 750,000 men in France But it is a new army. It 19 without exV ; " perience, and it is without experienced - regiments to stiffen it and give it con- • " fidenee. for the army of British regulars, tA* ? which -landed in France last August, has , ceased to exist. The old regimental name* remain, but the officers and men who composed those regiments are tod*v- in the hospitals or the cemeteries. '■pi. "The losses suffered by the British ••'•>v.v«rmy in Slanders are appalling. The : > .."West Kent Regiment, for example, has •//•Jjeea three times wiped out and three - -'time* reconstituted. Of the Black , Watch', -the Bifle Brigade, the infantry ,v. .of tl-' > Household, scarcely a vestige of (he original establishment* remain*.

Hardly less terrible are the losses which have been suffered by the Canadian contingent. The Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry landed in France I4UO strong. To-day, only l.>o remain. The present colonel of the regiment was a private iu the ranks last October. The [ machine that the British have knocked together, though still a trifle wabbly and somewhat creaky in the joints, is.'l convinced, ijoing to do the I business. J THE NEW TOMMY ATKINS "The British soldier of this new army ha 3 none of the rollicking, devil-may-' tare recklessness of the traditional Tommy Atkins. He las not joined the aimv from any spirit of adventure or bscaisj> he wanted to see the world. He is nflj an adventurer; he is a crusader. WiH him it is a deadlj serious He has not enlisted because he to or 'because he iiad to, but tecauß he felt he ought to. In cases out of a hundred he liss leftH family, a comfortable home, and a job behind him. And, unlike tH stay-at-homes in England, he doesfl makes the mistake of underrating enemy. He knows that the lieadlinM which appear regularly in the EngliH papers exultantly announcing British advance' are generally combe. He knows that it isn't a tion of advancing but of He knows that he will have to fight \v,Vh every Ounce of light there is in himJif he is to remain where he now is. lie knows that before the Germans can ' be driven out of France and Belgium, much less across the Rhine, all England Mill be wearing crape. He knows that there is np--truth in tli? reports that the eccniy is/weakening. He knows it because hasn't he vainly thrown himself in successive waves against that unyielding -wall of steel? "Out along the battle-front, in the trenches, and around the camp-fires, you do not hear the men discussing 'the terms of peace we will grant Germany,' or 'What shall we do with the Kaiser?' They are not talking much, they are not singing much, they are not boasting at all; but they have settled down to the herculean task that lies before them with a grim determination, a bulldog tenacity of purpose, which is eventually, I believe, going to prove the deciding factor in the war. Nothing better illustrates the spirit of the British soldier than the inscription which I saw on a cross over a newly made grave in Flanders: "Tell England, ye that pass this monument, that we who rest here died eontent.'" SCIENTIFIC ORGANISATION. "The great base camps which the British have established at Calais and Havre and Boulogne and Rouen are marvels of organisation, efficiency, and cleanliness. Canvas cities, with macadamised streets and sewers, and telephone systems and electric lights, and accommodations for a hundred . thousand men apiece, have sprung up on the sand-dunes of the coast as though by the wave of a magician's wand. Here, where the fresh, healing wind blows in from the sea, have been established hospitals, each with a thousand beds. Huge warehouses have been built of concrete to hold the vast quantity of stores which are being rushed across the Channel hy an endless procession of transports and cargo-steamers. So e/licient is the British field-post system, that within fortyeight hours after a 'wife or mother or sweetheart drops a letter into a postbos in England, that letter has been delivered in the trenches. Nor does the field-post confine itself to the transmission of letters. I know a lady who her son in Flanders a box of fresh asparagus from their Devonshire garden on] Friday, and he had it for his Sunday dinner. -A. -well-known American business manr has a son who is a second lieutenant in the Royal Artillery. When the father was s about to return to America, last summer, his son's battery was stationed in a particularly hot corner to the south of Ypyes. The father was desperately anxioug to see his son before he sailed, but he l Jcnew that the chances were almost infinitesimal. Nevertheless, he took a note to' Lord Kitchener explaining the circumstances, adding that he realised that it wate probably quite impossible to grant such request. Before he had been back in his hotel an hour he was called to the telephone. 'This is the secretary of Lord Kitchener speaking,' said the voice. "He desires me to say that you shall certainly' see your son before returning to AmeVica.' A few days later he received another message from the War Office: 'Take to-morrow morning's boat from Folkestone to Boulogne. Your son will be waiting for you on the quay.' The long arm; of the great War Minister had reached cftit across the English Channel, and had picked that obscure second lieutenant out' from that little Flemish village, and had brought him by motor-ear to the coast, with twentyfour hours' leave of absence, that he might say good-bye to lather." THE WAR OF THE TRENCHES. "According to the present British system, the soldiers spend tlireo weeks at the front and one week in /the rear—if possible, out of sound of) the guns. The entire three weeks at the front is, to all intents and purposes, spjent in the trenches, though every third' day the men are given a breathing speill. Three weeks in the trenches! I wonder if you at home in America have any but the haziest notion of what that mpans. I wonder if you, Mr. Lawyer—ycNi, Mr. Doctor—you, Mr. Business Man, can conceive of spending your summesr vacation in a ditch four feet wide\ and eight feet deep, sometimes with mud\a!Vi water to your knees, sometimes faiflt from heat and lack of air, in your noktrils the stench of bodies long month! dead, rotting amid the wire entangle-\ ments a few yards ir. front of you, and \ over your head steel death whining hungrily, ceaselessly. I wonder if you can imagine what it must be like to sleep —when the roar of the guns dies down sufficiently to make sleep possible—on foul straw in a hole hollowed in the earth, into which you have to crawl on all-fours, like an animal into its lair. I wonder if you can picture yourself as wearing a uniform so stiff with sw£at and dirt that it would stand alone, and underclothes so rotten with filth that they would fall apart were you to take them off, your body so crawling with vermin and so long unwashed that you are an offence to all whom you approach —yet with no chance to bathe or to . change your clothes or sometimes even to wash your hands and face for weeks on end. I wonder how your nerves would stand the" strain if you knew that at any moment a favourable wind migh* 1 bring a gas cloud rolling down upon you J to kill you by slow strangulation, or that j a shell might drop into the trench anft. I leave you without an arm or without a/1 leg, or that a Taube might let loos£ j upon you a shower of steel arrows, j which would pass through you ffs a j needle passes through a piece of cJoth, ( or that a mine might be exploded) he- j neath your feet and distribute you ,over 1 the landscape in fragments too "smafl to ■ be worth burying. lam perfectly a^v are j that this makes anything but pleagant )

reading, my friends; but if men of t gentle birth, men with university edu- f cations, men who are accustomed to the J same refinements and luxuries that you t are, can endur» these things, why, it 6 seems to the that you ought to be able - to endure reading about them." HOW THE GREAT GUNS SPEAK. / I '•'The effect of some of the newec J I types of high-explosive shells is almosiit j ' beyond conception. Fcr sheer liorroV . and destruction those from the Austrian^ made Skoda howitzers, known as 'Pity j sellers,' make the famous 4:2-centimetn'e • shells seem almost kind. The Skoia ' ■ j , ' i i i j j ' approach so that the men have time to dodge them. Their progress is so slow, indeed, that sometimes they can be seen. ' "Far more terrifying is the smaller ' shell, which, Deeause of its shrill, plaintive whine, has been nickpamed ;Weai-y ! Willie,' or those from the new 'nois(>- ' less' field-gun recently introduced by the Germans, which gives no intimation i of its approach until it explodes with a shattering crash above the trenches. Is 1 it any wonder that hundreds of officers f and men are going insane from the ' strain that they are under, and that hun- ' dreds more are in the hospitals suffer- • ing from neuritis and nervous breakdown?/Is it any wonder that, whe.n their term in the trenches is over, they < have to be taken out of sight and soundl ] of battle, and their shattered nerves restored by means of a carefully planned 1 routine of games and sports, as though ' they were children in a kindergarten ?>"' i THE GRIM HARVEST OP BATTLE. Mr. Powell gives a picture, Defoe- ! like in its grim details, of what he saw in the hospitals: • "In order that I may bring home to ' you the realities of this thing called war ' 1 want to tell you what I saw one day in a little town called Baillcul. Bailleu'l is only two or three miles on the French 1 side of the France-Belgian frontier, and ' it is so close to the firing-line that its ' windows continually rattle. The noise f. 1 along that portion of the battle-front • > never ceases. It sounds for all the world '? like the clatter of a gigantic harvester, j And that is precisely what it is—the j harvester of death. t "As we entered Bailleul they were J bringing in the harvest. Ther were a bringing it in motor-ears, many, many, £ many of them, stretching in endless pro- t cession down the yellow roads which a lead to Lille and Neuve Chapelle and r Poperinglie and Ypres. Over the-grey c bodies of the motoi-cars were grey can- j vas hoods, and painted on the hoods were staring scarlet crosses. The cur- r tain at the back of each car was rolled ; up, and protruding from the dim interior i were four pairs of feet. Sometimes y those feet were wrapped in bandages, and on the fresh white linen were bright red splotches, but more often they were 1 encased in worn and muddied boots. I i shall never forget those poor broken mud-encrusted boots, for they spoke ; so eloquently of utter weariness and pain. r There was something about them that f was the very essence of pathos. The . owners of thoie boots were lying on a stretchers which were made to slide into j the ambulances as drawers slide into a bureau, and most of them were suffering agony such as only a woman in childbirth knows. "This was the reaping of the grim j •.harvester which was at its work of mowing down human beings not five miles away. Sometimes, as the ambulances went rocking by, I would catch a fleeting glimpse of some poor fellow whose ■wounds would not permit of his lying down. I remember one of these in particular—a clean-cut, fair-haireu youngI ster who looked to be still in his teens. He was sitting on the floor of the am- : bulance leaning for support, against the rail. He held his arms straight out in front of him. Both his hands had been blown away at the wrists. The head of another was so swathed in bandages ,that my first impression was that he , was wearing a huge rcH-and-white turban. The jolting of the car had caused the bandages to slip. If that man lives little children will run from him in terror, and women will turn asi.l' when they meet him on the street. And still that caravan of agony kept rolling ] bv, rolling by. The floors of the cars - were sieves leaking blood. The dusty road over which they had passed no longer needed sprinkling. "In the afternoon that I was there eight hundred wounded were brought into that building between the hours of 2 and 4, and this, mind you, was but one of many hospitals in "the same little town. As I entered the door I had to stand aside to let a stretcher, carried by . two orderlies, pass out. Through the ' rough brown blanket which covered the stretcher showed the vague outlines of 1 a human form; but the face was eov- 1 sred, and it was very still. In a week or two weeks or a month, when the ( casualty lists were published, there ap- j peared the name of the still form under the brown blanket, and there was anguish in some English home. In the briTi- !■ way of the hospital a man was -jfting - y upright on a bench, and two were working over him. He '•as sitting - Ueiv because Lin* were 2 yfllfcd. I hope thatJtjut man is unmar\{ed, for he no longer has a face. What a 'few hours before Lad been the honest of an English lad was now v a hprrid welter of blood arid splintered 1 bon'e and mangled flesh. '•The surgeon in charge took me upstaJrs to the ward which contained the m.'fe serious cases. On a cot beside the doo?" .was stretched a young Canadian. 11 His! face looked as though a giant in 3 gpjlked shoes had stepped upon it. 'lA;ok,' said the surgeon, and lifted the v wciollen blanket. That man's body was o a field which has been gone over with a disc harrow. His feet, his legs, his*, abdomen, his chest, his arms, his y iacft were furrowed with gaping, angry wo>'nds. "He was shot through the hand,' explained the surgeon. 'He made 1 j !ijs way back to the dressing-station in e t tje reserve trenches, but just as he I reached it a shell exploded at his feet.' - j J patted him on the shoulder, and told ' that I too knew the land of the '} great forests and the rolling prairies, I and that before long he was going back |to it. And, though he could not speak, j he turned that poor torn face of his andj I\ ( smiled at me. He must have been snf-*~ 5 ' | fering the torments, of the damned, but ;be smiled at me—l tell you—he smiled n i at me. •" tl I "We went out from that place of nn- 0 I forgettable horrors into the sunlight and j

th£ clean, fresh air again. It was late afternoon, the birds were singing", a gentle breeze was whispering in the treetdps; but from over there, on the other s4de of ithat green and smiling valley, still came the unceasing clatter of that 'grim harvester garnering its crop of death. On the ground, in the shade of a spreading chestnut-tree, had been laid a stretcher, and on it was still another of those silent, bandaged forms. 'He is badly wounded,' said the surgeon, following the direction of my glance, 'fairly shot to pieces. But he begged us to leave him in the open air. We are sending him on by train to Boulogne tonight, and then by hospital-ship to England.' I walked over and looked down at him. He could not have been more than eighteen—just such a clean-liinbed, open-faced lad as any girl would have been proud to call sweetheart; any mother, son. He was lying very still. About his face there was a peculiar greyish palor, and on his half-parted lips had gathered many flies. X beckoned to the doctor. 'He's not going to England,' I whispered; 'he's going to sleep in France.'"