BLIGHTY

Manawatu Times, Volume XL, Issue 13984, 11 September 1918, Page 7

BLIGHTY

He woke; the clank and racket of the train Kept time with angry throbbings in his brain. At last he lifted his bewildered eyes. . And blinked, and rolled them .sidelong; hills and skies, Heavily wooded, hot with August haze, And, .slipping backward, golden for his gaze, Acres of harvest. He sighed, confused; then drew a cautious breath; This level journeying was no ride through death. "If I were dead," he'mused, "there'd be no thinking— Only some plunging underworld of sinkin o* And huoless, shifting welter where I'd drown.'' Then he remembered that his name was Brown. , But was he back in Blighty? Slow he turned, Till in his heart thanksgiving leaped and burned. There shone the blue serene, the prosperous land, Trees, cows, and hedges; skipping these he scanned friendly names thai:, change not with the year, Lung Tonic, Mustard, Liver Pills, and Beer. —Siegfried Sassoon. iii "The Old Eluntsman." sellor, and the Bavarian Prime Minister. In the absence of a properly constituted Government, backed by a majority of tin: House, Austria is in a worse case politically than she has ever jeen before, worse even than in 1848, >wing to insurrections, and 18G6 (Sa,Iowa). On those occasions the people were at any rate held together by loyllty to the dynasty, but now there is not even that bond uniting them. The young Emperor Charles no longer has the sympathies of his people, and consequently does not represent them. He has many enemies and apparently nc friends. The .Slavs suspect him because they consider him a German puppet; the Germans suspect, him because he is married to an Italian, woman; while the Socialists look on both Emperor and Empress as tools of the Jesuits and consequently agents of the Vatican. At no time in the history of the Austrian monarchy were there so many secret police as now watching the person of the Emperor and Lrnpress. Austria as at. present constituted is not and hardly can be governed by legal means, and the old Emperor fully realised this, When war broke out, the last thing he thought of doing was to convene the Austrian Parliament, and Count Sturglik. one day x>assing the Austrian Keichsrat building, remarked with the most cynical frankness. "My greatest achievement was to turn that building, :, !<o a hospital.'' Such methods, however, can only endure for a time, and Count Stnrghk ended his days by Dr Adler's revolver. Austria-Hungary, in short, is in a blind alley, at either end of which stands Germany in arms. The only papers in Vienna which have the courage to raise a voice on behalf of justice are "Der Kainpf " and the "Arbeiter Zeitung. " The latter may not enter Germany. Tt is therefore absurd and untrue when a section of the English press writes of the "Arbeiter Zeitung" a.s having been bought by Germany.