NO TEARS IN ENGLAND.

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume VI, Issue 270, 31 October 1916, Page 3

NO TEARS IN ENGLAND.

MR. S. S. McCLURE OX AN • INCREDIBLE PEOPLE.” Pursuing his study of contemporary civilisation, which has already occupied him fifteen years, Mr. S. S. McClure is once again in England and has given a Press representative his impressions of the effects of the, war upon English people. “I have spent since the war began,” said Mr. McClure, “nearly six months altogether in Turkey, Aus-tria-Hungary, Germany, Belgium and England. Taken as a whole England has performed the greatest achievement in history in raising five million volunteer soldiers within two years, and in creating the arms, munitions and equipment necessary for that army. No less wonderful, to my mind, is the development of the reserves of the working ability of the people. What interests me most is that you have, or will have, by the end of the war, a million women who, for the first time, have had the mental and physical development and uplifting that comes from earning money and training in work. In addition, you will have the four million trained men survivors from the battlefields, who will have the tremendous educational advantage derived from the physical, mental and moral training required for soldiers. The most interesting result is that there will be many millions of men and youths who will have advanced from unimportant commonplace labour to skilled work, so that something between ten and fifteen millions of the population will have made an enormous mental and physical advance. “In walking through y our cities of London, Manchester, Liverpool, Birmingham, and other places I have been struck by a new alertness a sort of mental and physical exhilaration that gives one the impression of being in Denver or Chicago. There is nothing so good lor the mnid and soul as physical labour. “Another fact I have noticed is the absence of tears and mourning. I have seen women and girls crowding the railway stations to bid good-bye to their soldier sweethearts and relatives. There was eagerness, yearning, longing admiration and tenderness-ia their faces, but practically no tears. The people are beyond tears. The effect of this permeates everybody, and results in a great spiritual exaltation. England and France are not simply renewed ; they are reborn. The British Empire is the youngest nation in the world. “The English are an incredible people. They are incredible in what you might call their slowness and deliberation, in their immovability ; but, after having made up t heir minds, they are incredible iu their implacability and their achievment.”