FOR EVER ENGLAND

New Zealand Listener, Volume 3, Issue 59, 9 August 1940, Page 10

FOR EVER ENGLAND

( Written For "The Listener"

By

MARY HEDLEY

CHARLTON

ce HERE’LL always be an England." The song is running through my head. It came over the wireless sung by a tenor with a golden voice-it vibrated round the room"If England means as much to you as England means to me." Well, we all have the spirit and the love of England, and nothing will go wrong. To-day I stood pondering a moment-what was it that wrung my heart so when I thought of England? Was it loyalty or the primrose lanes? The people or just the fact that I was born there? Then a child came running along with a puppy tumbling after him, and I realised that it was for that I loved England. For the peace and freedom of all living creatures. (And, of course, the primrose lanes, too.) * * * A year ago I saw a boy of seventeen dancing round at a party of jitterbugs. He wore fancy-dress and he flaunted a painted-on moustache. To-day I saw him, slim and young as ever, in khaki, with a strap under his chin, and a real little moustache, and something in his face that had not been there a year ago. When I saw him I knew suddenly that we were in some way going to be all right. There is something in our hearts that is going to save England. There is a deathless courage that is behind our sometimes frivolous selfishness-that courage that we have because we are British and have a passionate love for a calm little island with primrose lanes. J meme