Grey River Argus and Blackball News

Grey River Argus, 15 February 1915, Page 4

Grey River Argus and Blackball News

which he learned at school, but the war has made him a writer. The written word remains; and long after Thomas Aitken, returned from the war, has told his last tale to the grand children at his knee, the creased letters~which he wrote in the death strewn trenches of Flanders will be treasured heirlooms! The private soldier is not concerned with the political issues involved, or with the strategy or with colossal movements in which he is merely a pawn?' He is singularly free from" any attempt to vilify the enemy. There is a refresh ing absence of theories from his writings. He is absorbed in his task which is to defeat the men opposed to him. He is interested in his food, his chum, his wounds, the life of the trenches, the hand-to-hand fights, and the prisoners. His letters abound in those vivid, terse, spontaneous descriptions and epithets which are the raw material of literature, -in naive self revelations, and in Homeric episodes and adventures. This reveals above all' things,- the spizJfc of the nation. An adequate selection o.f them, arranged and displayed by a man with a genius for the task, would form a national'monument;. It is curious how the national traits reveal themselves in the romantic passion of the Scots, the rollicking devil-may-care humour of the Irish, and the matter-of-fact directness of the English. The essential Irishman is revealed in the occasional references to the old feud between the Orangemen and the Nation- <" alists, for these bitter partisans at home stand shoulder to shoulder in the firing line. Keferring to the way in which the Germans have destroyed chur dies and ill-treated the priests. Private Harkness of the Eoyal Irish Regiment writes:— "There are Protestants from the North who are wilder than we ore about it, and declare they won't stand by and see such things done by dirty Germans without making a row about it. One of them said the other day in his solemn Presbyterian way, 'I hate the Pope as much as any man, and I wouldn't think twice about shutting down all your chapels, but it's another story when the Germans try it on. That's the way most of the men from the North look at it." If the Kaiser had only understood the phase of Irish character that is here revealed perhaps there would not have been, any war. Here are some little masterpieces of description and epithet,' with the pungent savour of reality, worth pages of descriptive writing.' Private Davis discribes how a German airman was brought down by rifle fire.- "The fallmade him like a jelly-fish. Ugh!" Discribing "quite the worst thing. l saw," when a big mass of French infantry were suddenly overwhelmed by ambuscaded German batteries, a lance-corpor-al of the Eoyal Irish Fusiliers writes: — "The long advancing lines seemed to contract-like a frog does when you stick a pin in it. I never stuck a pin in a frog but I got the shivers all-right." "War is rotten," writes an artilleryman," but you can even get used to working in a candle factory. We hated smells even more than we did the Germans." Finally what volumes of experience there are in this little bit of advice from Private Smith, of the Army Service Corps: — "I should advise any chaps coining to France to bring a corkscrew with them." About deep, fundamental things like religion, chums and food, the soldier has much to say, and if he talks of them all in the same breath and in the same tone it is hot from any spirit of irreverence, it is simply his sincerity. Many of the bravest deeds on the field are done not for glory cr honour, but for the sake of a chum, and the most tragic letters arc those that tell of the death of a a chum. As for food, the writers revel in the subject, and they may have good cause to do so, for the Commissionariat Department supplies the stamina that enables our men to endure such fatigue Give us the Army "in which men fear God, love their chums, and enjoy their meals, and get them, and it will- march from Calais to the Pacific, if need be.

Deliver* d every morniug in Qreyxuouth Knmara, Hokitika, Dobson, Wallaend, Taylor ' Tille, Brunnotton, StUlwater. Ngahere, Blackball, l Nelson Creek, Abaura, Ikamatua, Waiuta, Keoftou, Crcmoduu, Ruuanga, Duuollie, Cobden, ( Baxters, Fokiri, Fatarta, Kaimata, Aratika, fiotnku, Moaua, . Bum, Te Kiuga, Kotomanu' ( ioerua, I boiinie, Jaokcons and Otic*. - — — .- , — — g MONDAY, February 15 1915. c _ . . fe e In the great wars of ■ past centuries, • 1 with the possible exception of the Amer j icau Civil war, the average private sol- t dier has been inarticulate. He could neither read nor write. His dear ones never heard of him 'save when they re- j ceived the intimation of his death,- or $ when he limped home a war worn vet- f eran. The next generation learnt some v thing of his experiences from his own lips. But soon the veteran passed away, q and the little record of his toils, suffer- 0 ings encounters , emotions and experien- c ccs flickered "out into cverlsrfting dark- f ness. The institution of free education y has changed all that. Private Thomas a Atkins goes to the wars armed with 0 a pencil as well as a rifle. He may not a have had much occasion heretofore to •„ practice the literary accomplishments a ]