TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 12, 1916. THE BRITISH SOLDIER.

Auckland Star, Volume XLVII, Issue 218, 12 September 1916, Page 4

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 12, 1916. THE BRITISH SOLDIER.

How rich in significance is that passage in Sir Douglas Haig's report of last week's operations, in which individual regiments are mentioned. " The fine work of the Irish from Connaught, Leineter and Munster, already mentioned, at GuUlcmont, was continued in the attach on Ginchy. Some of tUc Rifles Regiments,.also the Warwick, Kent, Devon, Oloucester, Surrey, Cornwall, Welsh and Scottish Regiments, were engaged in aJI the week's fighting, and have done splendid work." England, Ireland, Wales and Scotland shared in this triumph. Men from the great cities {ought side by side with men from the shires, whose forbears were for so long the source of the Army's strength. Sir Douglas Haig singles out the Irish for extra special mention, and he may have been tempted to add. "Sinn Fein newspapers please copy." Irish regiments here lived up to their reputation for being able to add to the average fonnidablencss of a charge a certain fiery impetus of their own. Scottish regiments have earned .'• similar reputation. In fact, before the war the deeds of Irish and Scottish reginiente, and especially thcec of Highland units, attracted rather more attention from the general public than did those of their English and Welsh comrades. The kilt and the tartan invested Highland regiments with a romance and picturesquenees which the more prosaic •English regiments of the line could not rival. The "effect of this was seen early in the war. when the London Scottish, a Territorial regiment, fought with .such splendid coirrage at Vprcs. There had been Territorial units in action before this, but the London Scottish were given all the. limelight in the English Press. The truth is that while Irish and Sottish regiments have peculiar qualities that are priceless, the core of the British Army has always been English. The ordinary English regiment of the line has proved its valour on a hundred fields. It stood like a rock at Waterloo, thongh many of the soldiers were recruits. In this war the mm of English shires and English cities liave won renown over and over again. Describing a British counter-attac-k in one of the critical phases of the first bate of Ypres • Mr. Buch.in says: "The honour of this famous movement fell to gsc of those homely English regiments of the line ■which have ever been the"'backbone of 'our..Army. .The- Second Wbrrestor.s in the" "Fifth" Brigade,"" "supported by our field artillery and by the- Second Oxford Light Infantry, swept down the highway, and drove the enemy before them. Like Cole's Fusiliers at Albuera, they came suddenly and "unexpectedly on the foe." Mr. Durban then qiiotcs that immortal passage from Napier: "Then was seen with what a strength and majesty the British soldier fights'. . . . Nothing.could stop that astonishing infantry." The Worcesters, by the way, had a splendid record in the Peninsula, Wellington calling the 29th "tlie best regiment in the Army." Recently Mr. Phillip Gibbs wrote a fine appreciation of the work of the Twelfth Division, the ■men in which arc mainly of English stock. ' It is significant that someone says of thie appreciation that " Here, at last, is a man who ventures to sing th<! praises of English, not British soldiers. In doing honour to Scots, Irish, Welsh, Australasians. Canadians, and Indians, the fact that it is the blood of England that has been poured out most upon the ■battlefield of Flanders is forgotten." Mr. Gibbs says it was "The very ancestors, of these men.. ivho fought with Harry at Agineourt," not far away from where he wrote. "They belong to tli« heart of England, the old "England! with its old fighting pride and fighting instinct?, which somehow have not die.i. in spite of our changes of thought and habit. They are still the backbone of the armies which are English as well' a"3 British." What .hae.happened in this war should decrease "the gap that there has been in the public estimation between corps d'etite " and" ' p'opirlat regiments' on the one " ' and what Mr. Buchan calls homely regiments on the other. This is not because the former have fought less heroically than in the past. Oiir Guards and Gordon Highlanders have covered themselves with glory. But it is because the "ran'< and file" of regiments have proved, α-s in ceed they had proved long before -tlvs war, that" they can pass through any ordeal which enemy numbers and the machinery of wir can The exBerlin correspondent of the "Daily M;ii." describes how a year before the war lm watched the '"honour company" of the First Regiment of the Prussian Guard — all picked eix-foot men— march past the Imperial party when they went to receive King George on his arrival in Berlin. The men of this-corps were regarded as the super-troops of the Kaiser's army, "hallowed by legend with conquerable prowess." A German journalist said to him as the company went by "Well, my dear Wile, that's something you haven't got in England.'" This German friend was right, says-' Mr. Wile. '.'There i» nothing like the Prussian Guard: there is something ibetter." This •wa» proved at Ypres, and again in this offensive on" the Somme. And among the tioops who proved themselves better

men man for man than this corps <fe)ite of the German army were soldiers of '"homely" regiments. When Kelson, beiore embarking on his last campaign, was asked by Uie Admiralty to choose h'u officers, he told the Admiralty to choose for themselves. The same spirit. 1 t>. said, animated the whole service. 1 Similar praise could be given to thr. British Army to-day, in which soldiers from every division of the United Kingdom are fighting gallantly, shoulder to shoulder, with men from overseas Dominions which -were non-existent in the dnys of the great English Admiral.