OUR SOLDIERS AND OTHERS.

New Zealand Listener, Volume 10, Issue 237, 7 January 1944, Page 3

OUR SOLDIERS AND OTHERS.

Sir,-National pride is no doubt a good thing, but excessive self-conceit makes a nation look ridiculous. It is about time New Zealanders stopped claiming that their troops are the best in the world. I am a returned soldier from this war and, personally, do not think the New Zealand soldiers have put up as good a show as the Chinese, for instance. Do you think you could publish Alan Mulgan’s poem "The English of the Line’? It might help the New Zealanders to make a New Year Resolution.

EX.-2nd

N.Z.

E.F.

(Wellington).

The poem is too long to be quoted in full, but we reproduce about 30 lines: We’ve fought the war again to-night, we men from overseas, From Anzac Cove to Messines Ridge, from Ypres to Galilee. * . . > > . We’ve drunk our meed of British: praise, and p’raps a little more; The British folk (and some of ours) suggest we won the war; But we know well, for all our record, long and clean and bright, That Tommy bore the heavier weight all through that long, long night. Why, ere we’d put a foot on ship, he’d fought from Mons to Aisne, And, out-gunn'd, fighting one to five, in a miracle of strain, He’d held the line in Flanders, while we, who did not know, Were wondering if the war would end before we'd strike a blow! And if our job was long and tough, where would we be to-day, If the Worcesters hadn’t made that charge, or the Kents had given way? We'd years of work to da, but half the war was won by then, And those who the German line were three parts or ‘Welsh or Not Scots or Irish men, but bred on ground, The land that holds the olden cords that round. It’s "Anzac" this and "Anzac" that, and "Canada’s brave sons," And "fiery Irish you all know how it runs, But not so much for Tommy, poor Tommy of the Line, Of the unromantic regiment whose blood is yours and mine, That doesn’t wear a broad-brimmed hat, and doesn’t swing in kilts, Our world-wide army’s rank and file-Yorks, Middlesex and Wilts, With Staffordshires and Devonshires, Berks, Cornwalls and West Kents, Bucks, Lancashires and Hampshires, all the homely regiments. They’ re pag Cinderellas in their countrymen’s They lack the" Celtié glamour, and they do not advertise. They leave their story to be found by him who cares to r — Minden on past Waterloo-a pantheon d Corunna, ‘Albuera’s clash-from sea to Pyrenees, Was it only Scots and Irishmen who won these vicaeated ; "The English of the Line" was written eee after the t War. The author, who a New Zealander of Irish blood, had never seen England, felt that of the se showered upon the armies of the Empire too little = ven to English units, and to e regiments,