ONE O'CLOCK WAR TRAIN

Evening Post, Volume LXXXIX, Issue 28, 3 February 1915, Page 2

ONE O'CLOCK WAR TRAIN

SCENES AT VICTORIA STATION. A stirring, if a touching, sight is the departure of the one o'clock train each day fiom Victoria Station, London, taking back to. the front officers and men who have been spending their short leave at home. A great mass of people throngs the station, but double barriers keep from the platform itself all bu{, the travellers and the friends who have come to see them qff. Even bo, tho platform is crowded, and to an onlooker, ignorant of the cause of the gathering, it would seem as if it must be some occa- > sion of unusual festivity. 1 Thpre are tears, of course, shed unaffectedly, and partings at the last j moment from which one can only turn away. There are anxious women faces. But the men themselves arc in — or gallantly assume — such laughing spirits that anything like general or sustained Repression is impossible. Extraordinary fine men they are, too, many of them in equipment which shows unmistakable evidence of recent hard usage, and the mixture of regiments and uniforms makes the assemblage doubly interestipg. R.E., R.A., R.F.A., R..M.C, A.S.C., M.M.P., you can read the lettering of almost every branch of the service ; Grenadier and Coldstream Guards, South Wales Borderers, Lanuashires, llighla,nders in kilts, airmen and staff officers of every degree ; ribbons on the breast which tell of service in South Africa, in the Sudan, and on the Indian frontier ; and every man looks fit and, outwardly at least, is as happy as a schoolboy going for his holidays. The train runs in two sections, the eariler leaving at a few minutes beforo one o'clock, the second a few minutes alter. It seems impossible, as /the whistles blow, that out o r all the clinging leave-takings all the passengers can really get on board. But bomehow, swinging into open doors and clustering on carriage steps as the train is already moving, they are safely off, still shouting back laughing "Good-byes." As the train slides away a d,eep-Yoiced. cheer rises from it } to be answered by another, leas deep-voiced, from the thrcmg left upon the platform, the air above which, is a forest of waving hats and umbrellas. It is all very British, the casualness of it, and the masking under laughter of the deeper emot-Jons. Certain reflections, must occur to anyone who witness.es the scene. The first is of the splendid quality of the sacrifice which we are making. To British eyes it seems impossible that any men whom other nations are offering on the battlefield can be quite as fine ag these, our own. Next, one must wish that every man who hesitates abou.t< joining tho army could go to see that train go put,; for" no man could help being happy and proud to be one among such comrades \n such a leave-taking.