MODERN GOTHS.

Taranaki Daily News, 8 March 1916, Page 7

MODERN GOTHS.

TRIBUTE TO AUSTRALASIANS. FINEST FIGHTERS OF THE WAR." A writer in an article on Egypt in Guy's Hospital Gazette, London, pays a warm tribute to the Australian and New Zealand soldiers. "Every famous spot here," the writer says, "is full of the panoply of war. At Mustaplia Pasha, the site of the camp of the old Roman army of occupation, there is a great convalescent hospital at Chatty and the 'Camp de Caesar' is another huge encampment, and the British horse lines are on the site of the Necropolis of the Ptolemies; while Australian soldiers bathe every morning on the beach at the spot where legend Ms it that St. Mark achieved martyrdom. "In this old, old spot of the Old World the newest qf the now worlds is very much in evidence. The Australians and New Zealanders are everywhere, far more numerous than the English or the French, and if you really want to realise how they fit into the picture you must take down Charles Kingsley's 'Hypatia,' and read his description of the Goths in Alexandria. There they are to the life, men of magnificent appearance, the finest fighters this war has seen, but, tg those of a more concentrated urban civilisation, great turbulent children. Spending their money freely, they pervade the streets, they crowd the music-halls, they swagger about spoiling for a fight and often getting one. To salute an officer is a habit almost unknown to them, and of discip- I line in the ordinary parade ground sense they are to a great extent contemptuous; but fight! they are the admiration of the world and the terror of the enemy, and they alone of all the wounded who return from that hell upon earth in Gallipoli seem anxious, even insistent, to get back to the trenches and have another round with the Turks. Well may Australia be. proud, and Alexandria a little frightened, of them!"