AMERICAN VIEW OF BRITAIN’S NEW ARMY.

Gisborne Times, Volume XLV, Issue 3966, 26 June 1915, Page 7

AMERICAN VIEW OF BRITAIN’S NEW ARMY.

IMPRESSIONS AT THE FRONT. The “United Press” publishes the following article sent by its correspondent at the British front, Mr YVilliam G. Shepherd : HE A DQ CARTERS OF THE BRITISH ARMY, Northern France. This is not Tommy Atkins; i*'* John Bull. The minute you begin to rub elbows with the English Army, you make this discovery. Tommy Atkins, the professional English .soldier, is here aplenty: ho flots tlie English Army. John Bull is the everyday English citizen, and lie seems to he around here in hundreds of thousands. Tommy Atkins is the soldier that Kipling sings about. John Bull has never been sung about. He’s the John Bull who believes his home is his castle; in fact, it is that belief that has brought him here. He’s the John Bull who pays hie taxes, who reads newspapers, and talks politics, who has a garden, a wife and children, and who travels daily, in peace times, between hi* home and his office.

Take any one of your younger neighbours—a lawyer, a street-car conductor, a real estate man. a clerk; quiet fellows who stay at home on summer evenings and squirt the laws or weed the garden-—and I’ll go out on the streets of this headquarters town and find his counterpart for you within five minutes. He’s carrying a gun and wearing khaki. Or I’ll find him for you lying under a wooden cross in one of the field cemeteries, near by. his part of the job that he came out here to do well and nobly finished. It was his duty to show that he believed not only that an Englishman’s home is his castle, but that a Belgian’s .home and a Frenchman’s home, and everv home in all civilisation, is a sacred shelter that must be untouched by enemies. THE CALL OF DUTY.

There’s a thrill about being with the English Army that no American can miss. These hundreds unoii hundreds of,thousands of men are volunteers; every man jack of them sat down and thought it all out for himself before he went to the recruiting office and asked for a place in the Army. Today, in the English Army khaki, he’s liis own man’s man.. He_’s responsible to his superiors, for lie’s a soldier; hut primarily he’s responsible to himself and to that castle of his back home and to every jeopardised castlehome in every corner of the earth. He’s worked out his duty for himself as a man works out his own religion or the other great problems, of his life, and the answer to his problem is that here he is in khaki, a full-fledg-ed soldier. Don’t believe these stories that he’s always singing “Tipperary.” and that he’s always ready for a fight or a frolic. There’s no frolic about it and very little music. His frolic and his music are awaiting him at his castle somewhere in the Empire, if he ever sees it again. He came out. here to tight, and lie’s in dead and serious earnest. He wasn’t always singing “Tipperary” while-he was doing his day’s duty in peacetimes or while he was travelling to and from work; no more does he do it Low. This is a serious job. just like his peace-time duty: the frolic and the music- may oorno after life job is done. A C ITIZEN ARMY.

The thrill unit an American gets, rubbing elbows with this volunteer British Army, comes with the knowledge that there are only two great Powers in the world that have the voluntary military system —Great Britain and the United States. Through all the long winter, back m the British Isles. I saw men in silk hats, in derbies, in long coats, in short' coats, in hunting boots, in street shoes, drilling and marching and counter-marching; their faces were always set determinedly. Now I see these same men here, in khaki and caps. They are here because-they are forced to be here; forced by something within themselves. They are here not only because they wanted to be here, but- because they were determined to be here. That’s the English Army of to-day, at the front.