NEW GENERATION OF SOLDIERS

Press, Volume LXXVI, Issue 23004, 26 April 1940, Page 10

NEW GENERATION OF SOLDIERS

“Tradition Safe In Keeping ” TRIBUTE OF COLONEL ROWLLINGS “Make no mistake. There is nothing wrong with the new generation. They are good boys —just as keen, just as hard, and their excuses for absence without leave just as ingenious as ever,” declared Colonel E. T. Rowllings, Officer Commanding the Southern Military District, when replying to the toast of “The Fighting Services” at the reunion of the Christchurch Returned Soldiers’ Association on Wednesday. Colonel Rowllings had said that the Old Brigade” might even yet have an active and important part to play in the present war. “But what of the new brigade?” he asked. The men of the Ist Echelon went into camp without any knowledge of what lay ahead of them. They were willing to take a chance on where they would be sent. The colonel said he often looked over the men in camp and wondered which of them would be the Dick Travis of the new generation. But he had every confidence in these new soldiers. “They are only one more generation of something that has been in our nation for centuries. The tradition of those who scaled the heights of Quebec and of Anzac, France and Belgium is safe in their keeping.”