AMERICAN VIEW OF BRITAIN'S NEW ARMY.

Auckland Star, Volume XLVI, Issue 145, 19 June 1915, Page 8

AMERICAN VIEW OF BRITAIN'S NEW ARMY.

IMPRESSIONS AT THE FRONT. The "Cnited Press" publishes, tlie following article sent by its correspondent at the British front, Mr. William G. Shepherd:— HEADQUARTERS OF THE BRITISH ARMY. Northern France. This is not Tommy Atk*ms: it's John Bull. The minute you begin to rub elbows with the English Army, you make this discovery. Tommy At kmfi, the professional English soldier, is here aplently; he dots the English Army. John Bull is the everyday English citizen, and he seems to be around here in hundreds of thousands. Tommy Atkins is the soldier that Kipling singe about. John Bull has never been sung about. He's

the John Bull who believes his home is his castle; in fact, it is that belief that

has brought him here. He's the John Bull who pay. his taxes, who reads _ewspapers, and talks politics, who has a garden, a wife and children, and who travels daily, in pence times, between his home and his office. Take any one of your younger neighbours—a lawyer, a street-car conductor, a real estate man. a clerk; quiet fellows who stay home on summer evenings and squirt the lawn or weed the garden—and I'll go out on the streets of this headquarters town and find his counterpart for you within rive minutes. He's carrying a gun and wearing khaki. Or I'll find him for you lying under a wooden cross in one of tho field cemeteries, near by, his part of the job that he came out here to do well and nobly finished. It was his duty to show that ne believed not only that an Englishman's home is his castle, but that a Belgian's home and a Frenchman's home, and every home, in all civilisation, is a sacred shelter that must be untouched by enemies.

THE CALL OF DUTY. There's a thrill about being with the English Army that no American can miss. These hundreds upon hundreds of thousand- of men are volunteers; every man jack ol" them sat down and thought it all out for himself before he went to the recruiting office and asked for a place in the Army. To-day, in the English Army khaki, he's his own man's man. He's responsible to his superiors, for he's a soldier; but primarily he's responsible to himself and to that*ca6tle of his back home and to every jeopardised castle-home in every corner of the earth. He's worked out his duty for himself as a man works out his own religion or the other great problems of his life, and the. answer to his problem is that here he is in khaki, a full-fledged soldier.

Don't lwlievc these stories that he's always singing "Tipperary," and that he's always ready for a fight or a frolic. There's no frolic ahout it and very little mimic. His frolic and -his music are awaiting him at his castle somewhere in the Empire, ir ne ever sees it again. He came out here, to fight, and he's in dead and serious earnest. He wasn't always singing "Tipperary'' while he was doing his day's duty in peace times or while he waiis travelling to and from work; no moro does he do it now. This is a serious job, just like his peace-time duty; the frolic and the music may come after the job is done.

A CITIZEN ARMY. The thrill that an American <*ets rubbing elbows with this volunteer British Army, comes with the knowledge that there are only two great Powers in the world that have the volunttary military system—Great Britain and the United States.

Through all the long winter, back in the British Isles, I saw men in silk hate, in derbies, in long coats, in short coate, in hunting boots, in street shoes, drilling and marching and countermarching; their faces were always set determinedly. Now T see these same men here, in khaki and caps. They are here because they are forced to be here; forced b. something within themselves. They are here not only because they wanted" to be here, but because they were determined to be here.

That's the Engiieh Army -of. ■at the front, ' .