LOST YEARS OF WAR

Dominion, Volume 12, Issue 89, 9 January 1919, Page 8

LOST YEARS OF WAR

BRIDGING TR.E GAP Il\ PEACE TIME. Tho problem of the "lost years" is an awkward one (writes Mr. Sydney Howard in the "Daily Mail"). A youth of p who enlisted in IBM is now a young man of 23. Before the war he was a student or mi apprentice; when peace is signed ho will Ijo past the uge of study but without the equipment for a profession or a trade. But tho problem has its brighter side, jluch has been written against our universities. It is claimed that they did not equip students for commerce or the professions, and were inferior to Continental universities. This may have been so, but the 'war lias shown that our 'varsities produced a type superior to the highly technical Hun—they produced men.

The war has swept universities out cf existence fi'iiipm-nrily, but there is a wider 'varsity where men learn the great truths of lifo—tho university of the trenches.

It is a hard school, lien do not go in at ono eud as weaklings and emerge at tlie other ns heroes, but I have never wet a. 7nan who hns not been affected by trench life. All are not improved, but each is altered for better or worae—almost invariably for better. Tho misery of the conditions depresses—that is where thfr weaker nature is overwhelmed and embittered—but the incomparable com■radc&iiip of the stiirit. sustains..

War is of the devil, but the cheerfulness of Hie British "Tommy," the eounxre that laughs at unutterable, horrors.'the heroism of the soul. tliat inspires the- body <•!> "carry on" despite the wenrintss of the flesh, tile charity that men displayiin giving the last of their precious water to a in»n who has beenjit—these aro of Gnd. Never in the woi'ltl's history has Christianity been practised on Mich a pnale as in the trenches. Men fieht and kill, it te true, but they, fisrht for a urrat ideal and they kill what is vile. It is iinpoe■sibln to live for months acquainted with death and not h> realise the pettiness of bickering over rifles. Perhaps to some the fighting man appears more callous in that for hi»> 'l<v>Hi hm lost much of Hβ tragedy; but these fail to flee the filter's

-—that the length of n man's sv.ni\ i= of less trapedy in.the rfpath of ai rrinn lcillpil while nsditinp; for hie idnnU thin in the lonr»r years of one who shirks his dnfv and dips an'old man.

yhe fighter has Inst -wound i" flic details of brcad-ai"l-buttev i»r.i'W'in(r—he cannot nddnn figures in a ledger ■as nuickly as before, h« ii not a '«Villi>d lnrehnmc r\t the trrdo he left f"p )hp wnr. but his moral is hishev. Hβ hes In-TPd Hiiiißs Hint th« etav-nt-homn lint not. anrl lii«j is t.l"> of cnmaradprii. 'hat wan once only the po«sc«''nn nf ""• fni-timate fen- who lied finioyed a pnblin ipi.'xM or 'varsih" trainin".

After Hip wi>' - vVrpvn" ™« n m& y fhp nc'osKon will bp not "What wns you=clionl ?" but "What wa< vour re°imeiit?"