PATRIOTS.

Greymouth Evening Star, 23 March 1911, Page 8

PATRIOTS.

A NIGHT WITH THE CANTERBURY ~ -SCOUTS.

( The reporter had heard vaguely of the Canterbury Scouts Reserve Corps. He had been told that it was composed entirely of men who had seen active service —but whoso services were noT> wanted. As that had sounded strange and improbable, in view of the fact that defence was the question of the moment and the uniform of the Volunteer was beginning to be regarded as something at least as respectable as a football jersey, he set i out to make enquiries. The answers he got I were definite, if not pleasing, and left him convinced that patriotism could be a very tangible thing and, on occasion, quite different from the enthusiasm of platform speeches and the hysterias of “'Mafeking” nights. “It’s true,” said one of the Scouts, “we’ve all seen service. Everyone of the present members was in the South African War. .We are forty-eight Strong and we got five shilings a year capitation grant. Sounds mean ? It does. But then they’ve been good enough to give us rifles and bandoliers and sidearms—probably they did that in a weak moment, for we can’t get waterboC’es or haversacks. Uniforms . are out of the question. We’re mostly | working chaps, our average wage isn’t more than £2 10s a week,' and we’ve got to pay £l2 a year to keep the corps going. That’s wiiat they charge us for the rent of a rotten cellar in the barracks. It’s hot the fault of the local authorities. They do their best and we’ve got a lot to thank them for.

“But if you want to get an idea of what we do. and the sort of place we have to do it in, come along on Friday night to our room in the Destructor yard. isn’t the sort of place that one likes to ask anyone to, but I don’t suppose the captain, Dr Fenwick, will mind. SergeantMajor Salt (a brother to Mr George Salt, manager of Revingtons Hotel, Greymouth) holds a class there twice a week to instruct men in N-C.O. duties, and get them ready for their exams. We’re lucky in having him, he’s the equal of any instructor the Government has got. Three nights n week - he and the others give to it, and we parade every months although we’ve only got to turn out four times a year to earn our five hob. We give considerably more time to it than the ordinary volunteers, and they nay us five bob a year, with a had grace. We’re just ‘returned empties.’ We’ve done onr turn, and now we’re only nuisances. The Government won’t recognise us (it’s- got lots of time for Officers’ Training Corps, and such), so we just keep going on onr own. But it makes us rather sick. You come along on Friday night.” So the reporter went on Friday night. The room was a surprise. Bare, comfort* and not immaculately clean. The white-washed brick walls were blackened in places and festooned with garments, the working. clothes of the employees of the municipality. The air was fiend and heavy. The ventilation seemed defective. There was a sour, sicklv smell like that of new oilskins. It was the odour of an overcrowded forecastle. But the men are "Tateful to the City Council for permitting them to use it. “Think this place rotten? You should see our cellar. Its half the size, and dark, and has an earth floor. If it wasn’t for this place we couldn’t keep going.”

One by one the men came in. They had served their country and their -country had no thought for them once their service had ended. They were men of good physique, all of them. And their talk showed that they had cultivated power* of observation. _ They talked of things that pass unnoticed everyday; they made quotations from the Parliamentary reports. Presently they talked of Africa. It was not the jargon of kopjes and kops and spruits and laagers; those were stock-in-trade of war correspondents. They talked of the veldt as Henry Lawson talked of the roads he tramped, casually and graphically. “Silverton, where the soil was red, like blood, on your boots.” 'That was just one remark. There wer« dozens of others like it. One man ended a long story. “And they brought me back from there. I might have been instructor to the constabulary; they offered to bring my wife and kids over to me. I went to the Colonel and ho says,, ‘No, New Zealand wants every man back.’ So I had to come. And I was ten weeks getting a iob.”

Work commenced. Sergeant-Major Salt began to coach them in squadron drill. The first order sounded queer! y. “Out matches.” The captain brought forth a regiment of leaden soldiers, splendid in uniforms of vivid paint, (he had carried them down in an instrument case) and after they had been distributed the men who bad not received anv (there were not enough to go round) laid matches on the table. As the orders were given, the soldiers and the matches were rearranged. It was strange, there in that bare room, to see men tired after their day’s work (they’ve everyone of them been up since six o’clock, they’re drivers and that sort of thing mostly and been working hard,” the captain) busy with the manoeuvring of the little leaden dummies.. The hard, work marked, the weatherreddened hands moved swiftly and deftly, manipulating the matches, each one of which was a troop of mounted men. The instructor questioned and cave explanations. The men devoted their whole attention to the work in hand.

Presently that phase of the work was over, and the long, rough table was shifted back. The men took their coats off and got ready for drill. The instructor was g martinet. Nothing short of mechanical precision and machine-like swiftness and reguarity would satisfy him. His idea aid his ideals were still those of the Hussar regiment. His voice was clear and even, each word of the explanatory am mandatory recitative was clean-cut am audible. His patience was wonderful; no order was too long to be repeated over and over until it was fulfilled to his' satisfaction. And he was not easily satisfied. The reporter left them, sweating over (heir physical drill. He had found out a little about the Canterbury Scouts, the corps that “the Government doesn’t want.” It was strange that men of the sort that candle-box orators call wage slaves.” should devote whole evenings 10 study and to drill. They had wives and homes most of them, there was the freedom of the streets, there was fresh air, yet they preferred to spend a long hot summer evening intent on the manoeuvres of leaden soldiers drilling in their shirt sleeves, the sweat standing out on their foreheads in little beads, breathing in the warm, sour-smelling odour of the working lollies of the corporation employees, and 11 from a sense of duty. It was patrio- . ism.