A PADRE ON MORALE

Evening Post, Volume CVI, Issue 90, 13 October 1923, Page 19

A PADRE ON MORALE

"A, Yankee with the Soldiers of the King." By Alexander Irvine. New York: E. P. Dutton and Co.

War books are considered to be now out of date; but this is a work that contains much that it humorous blent with much that is pathetic. Dr. Irvine, anative of the North of Ireland, has' in his time been a. coal miner, private-sold-ier, and' city missionary in New York— when he:became a citizen of the.United Mates. He came to iave experience of -war through being among those who were selected by the British Government to lecture and-speak to the men in France and Belgium to hearten them up, to stiffen their morale under the severest testa that were ever applied to morale. H e was up with the troops in the critical days of March, 1913, and ot the Ypres neighbourhood he writes how about a hundred officers and noncoms assembled in the Y.M. hut at the Memn gate to listen to his first message. He had been speaking about nve minutes when an air raid occurred. • £ as the. on'y time during his service v"*S an»t V ieh " Jeny " utterly ih»t which" was always a . maior consideration-, m my speeches-humour ' ' J At ■■intervals of thirty or foriv seconds the bombs fell, each "one dropping nearer than the preceding one. The ear,n shook and trembled. Nobody moved. "I kepi on ta'.king-not by any means unconcerned, but -'us!, a iit'-'e curious to krow whether half of us or al. of us would be ushered' into another existence by tne next bomb." He g-Ves SiTm d. eSC£ ption' of the retreat, of 21st March, 1918, being 6t Harboniew. There he say M . } le >vent thithe; . for twenty milss along the route the Br;tlsh Cavalry standing In readiness—the rnon_ oy^tn e horses' heads bridles ;n vT' -rmet ne ;a"cas Slsamod i:i t-ne sunlight. Restlessly the horses pawed, but .here was n 0 noise. Not a sound, not a word o. command broke the Riilines?. A sense of power charged the ai- 'Hie .reserve artillery were in the f-ur.v-i roads Overhead Allied airpier.es leapt on the eyes of the enemy.' /t, Farbonlers the division ha was to address -„as called snto action before his opeech could

be delivered. On his return to Ham he found himself caught in Kia backwash of the retreat. " Tha sireetc were sol.'dly packed with men standing to. We could hardly push our v;a;/ through. . . . The walking wounded vrers pst, v/ounded men who could walk—fingers gone, heads, arms, and bodies smashed and broken. ._ ; . They had or.ly what they stood in, and thc.t was smearac T red. They had beer, in hail since dawn, and were exhausted and weak."

As for the "Digger," he r.oies ih&t the difference in temperament was greater and resultant clashes on meeting Jar more frequent between Australian and Englishman than between Englishman and American. " Why didn't you.salute me?" said a British subaltern to a tall Digger to whom rank wasn't ever the guinea's stamp. " Kid," ss,id the Australian, with a paternal look in his eyes, ' I'm not here for physical exercise." The callous forgetfulness of the American and other fighting men of the lesson EO terribly taught, arouses Dr. Irvine's indignation. His last mission, to collect funds on the millionaire's playground 'of the Riviera for the men left to clean up the devastated regions was. a frank " fizzle," in spite of the patronage of the Duke of Connaught." Dr. Irvine writes: Some were courteous; some were hardly that One noble lord was the most ignoble oi tnem all. A tew were vulgar. . There were people who were reputed to be very walthy who gave 50 francs. A few gave more many gave less. ... He (the Duke) was the only man in the crowd who was interested. ... A year afterward in St. James s Palace, he asked me about the result of the appeal. I told him we didn't get the price of our railway fare!

He returned to the States last year " as poor in material things as I was when I came as an immigrant in 1883," Dr. Irvine notes a let-down as depressing, in its way-as that to which he had been a witness in impoverished Europe.

are in a backwash. ... We have become reactionary. We have bartered world leadership for a mess of political pottage. ... . We brazenly stand erect amid the rums of a world and proclaim ourselves holier than other men. . . . And yet the darkness is not without its fringe of light . . : . The pendulum will swing back. The appeal to the spirit will be heard. That and co-operation with the risht-thinking peoples of all nations will pull us through.

Dr. Irvine's book is timely, for there is a danger that the shouting has died down and " we have forgotten."