“ALIEN’S” LETTER FROM ENGLAND.

Otago Witness, Issue 3201, 21 July 1915, Page 71

“ALIEN’S” LETTER FROM ENGLAND.

May 25. Never in the history of England has such a Whitsuntide of sorrowing been known. The golden sunshine and sweet airs laden with the scent of lilac and hawthorn and a thousand blossoming shrubs and trees seem but a callousness of Nature that recreates and revels in life and beauty, while man is battering and despoiling, plundering and murdering and defaming, a blind chance that tosses the innocent to the sacrifice. If ever the world needed a faith in the “final goal’ of good, it needs it now; if ever it needed a religion of deeds it is now, with the “stately homes of England” turned into military hospitals, her daughters nursing and her sons fighting, and the inhabitants of a country, which this time last year were playing all round its peaceful shores, half fearful to sleep through the gentle starlit nights lest the enemy’s fireballs drop from the undefended sky and burn and choke the children while they dream. Into the anxious days the troop train collision at Gretna Green sent a horror inexpressible. It is one of those inexplicable events that make the superstitions ask,. “Is the hand of God upon us?’ Those 500 brave soldiers of the Royal Scots had worked for months with enthusiasm to fit themselves for the supreme hour of service for country. Their farewells were said, their faces bravely set towards their duty, and in a moment they were flung into an inferno of anguish and fire more terrible than any in the trenches, and pinned and crushed helplessly benea.th debris, slowdy roasting to death. The account issued you will nave read—how the midnight express to Glasgow was thundering to its destination crowded with passengers, many going ro Scotland for Whitsuntide, among them soldiers and officers on leave, and the troop train at express speed coming from the opposite dii*tection, when a local passenger train from Carlisle, which is usually shunted into a siding to allow the Euston express to pass, the siding on this occasion being occupied, the local train crossed to the opposite side of the line. Too late ! The Euston express came crashing into it in the centre, and before it could be stopped the troop train clashed up from the opposite direction, and all three trains were an inextricable mass that speedily caught fire. The fire spread to the stationary goods train on the siding, and all four trains were burning together. There were scenes of indescribable agony, of indescribable bravery, the screams of dying mingled with the cries of the rescued for their dear ones, and the roar of the cruel flames. The doctors and rescuers risked their lives to save others. One doctor amputated the limbs of several men to set them free. Attached to the troop train were coaches of ammunition, and a terrific explosion was averted by the promptness with which the umvounded soldiers detached these coaches and removed them from the zone of fire. Many of the soldiers as truly deserved the V.C. for their heroic deeds as though they had been at the front, and many more as truly died for their country. Again and again imploring cries came from the men in the burning ruins for someone to shoot them or give them a swoi’d to sever their own limbs to get free. Nearly 500 soldiers travelled by the troop train, but when the roll was called on the hillside only 50 answered to their names. The others who were not killed were among the injured. All day the fire burned everything that was not metal of the wreck, and when evening came, among the ashes were the charred remains of what that dawn had been a fine, brave young soldier, with his heart high for gallant deeds. The band of rescuers and the Carlisle Fire Brigade combined were unable to put out the fire, and the flames prevailed till all that was left of the three trains was a twisted mass of steel. The identification scenes have been harrowing, and have been done only by some personal trifle upon the remains of the victim. Many London people were in the Euston express. The collision took place just to the north of Sark, which is the stream dividing England and Scotland. Among the mourners are a number of girl- ; widows, who wore married to their heroes only a week or so before their fatal start to the front. More perfect holiday weather has never , smiled on Whitsuntide,- and there all has I been said for the holiday gaiety, for those ; who could be merry under present condi- | tions are not the sort of people anybody is interested in hearing about. For the most part people spent the free days in their gardens or with their wives and children in the open parks, where the great encampments are. The young men slackers take themselves off as much as possible out of the public eye on bicycle trips or j down the back waters of the river, for ! they are not admired even by the “flap- 1 pens” these days, when from the Kino- and \ Queen downwards every true Briton is at his post. Their Majesties had intended to retire to Windsor—which is very beautiful just now—for a few days’ rest from their onerous duties, but the crisis of the Cabinet keeps his Majesty in close touch with Westminster. There is, of course, no society social life whatever, and the races curtailed in the original plan of the Derby and Ascot aro now entirely abandoned. Only at Newmarket will the racing stables be kept open. This decision has plunged many thousands of men, besides the bookmakers, into difficulties. It ■will also release many for the front. One would imagine that at this time of national stress there would be no body or bodies of men willing to create further difficulties, yet the London City Council Tramway Wen found last week opportune for a strike for higher wages, and the already harassed holiday crowd found great in«onvenience in getting out into the open

(Specially Written for the Ladies’ Page.)

A WHITSUNTIDE OF GRIEF.

i beyond endless miles of bricks and mortar. ! But one result of the strike was unexI pected—the request of the City Council to j all strikers of military age to return their - uniforms. Many of them returned them- ' selves in the uniform. Men in khaki who volunteered at the beginning of the war | took their old posts as drivers and conductors for the time being, so that a i number of the people thought that the tramways were under martial law. j Under the new National Cabinet one hopes and prays that stronger methods will be used for the utilisation of the whole i immense force of the nation, so much of | which during the past 10 months has been , misdirected or has gone to waste. The , necessity for the adoption of universal ser- ! vice in Britain can scarcely longer be in I doubt. We are fighting for our existence as a people, and for freedom and civilisa- . tion itself, and we cannot longer afford to divide our strength into party sections. The special departments want specialists, I no matter which side they come from, j and the recruiting muddle is like to be as disastrous as the muddle about shells. The voluntary system gives the willing man, but it is at enormous cost. Seventy per cent, of the recruits are married men, i which, while it proves that woman’s influence makes for duty, is false economy in that it floods the country with widows and fatherless children, and the fatherhood of the State will never fill the place of the individual father who personally cultivates and educates his children to the utmost of his resources. . And in too many cases it is the stamp of man best fitted for the duty and responsibilities of fatherhood —physical, mental, : and moral—who have responded to the call | of the country, the true backbone of the nation. Also, a large number of skilled men, married and single, have been drawn from trades that are indispensable for the carrying on of the war, while there are numerous unmarried men, physically fit, who are engaged in work that could be equally well done by women. Take tram-conducting, for instance, milking, ' and numerous other occupations. Wherever women have ‘appeared in men’s employments they have done excellently; but of the tens of thousands who have registered for war work not a third have been utilised. The patriotic and highsouled grudge nothing for the safety of the country, hut the responsibility should fall upon all equallv, as the rights of freedom fall. Among the lessons that are being learned in this most terrible war is that the old idea that one willing soldier is worth three mechanically-trained has passed its day. Seldom does it come to hand-to-hand fighting; it is men in the mass, shells, gas, and other butcheries that we have to meet in the mass, or be defeated. The revelation of our weakness in both shells and men, although Britain seems one vast camp, has been an electric shock to those self-absorbed people who were quite sure the Empire did not require any help from them. This is what a distinguished American correspondent of the New York ’World says:—- ' The British soldier of to-day has none of the rollicking, devil-may-care recklessness of the traditional Tommy Atkins. He has not joined the army from anj 7 spirit of adventure or because he wants to see the world. He is not an adventurer; he is a crusader. With him it is a deadly serious business. He has not enlisted because he wanted to, but because be felt that he ought to. In 99 cases out of 100 he has left a family, a comfortable home, and a good job behind him. And, unlike the stay-at-homes in England, he doesn’t make the mistake of underrating his enemy. He knows that before the Germans can be driven out of Belgium, much less across the Rhine, all England will be wearing crepe. He knows that there is no truth in the reports that the enemy is weakening; he knows it because—hasn’t he vainly thrown himself in successive waves against that unyielding wall of steel? He knows that it is going a long war. All this, of course, will not make pleasant reading in England, where the Government and a certain section of the press have given the people the impression that Germany is already beaten to her knees, and that it is all over but the shouting. Out along the battle front, however, in the trenches and around the camp-fires, you do not hear the men discussing “the terms of peace we will grant Germany,” or “what we will do with the Kaiser." They are not talking much, they are not singing much, they are not boasting at all, but they have settled down to the herculean task that lies before them with that same bulldogtenacity of purpose, that same grim determination, which characterised the men who wore the bine in the dark days of the American Civil War. This same writer draws a picture of the Prince of Wales at the British Headquarters in France that will make his mother proud, as are many Empire mothers to-day. He described him as a “nicelooking boy,” whom he watched at his early-morning exercise. “He wore a jersey and white running shorts, which left his kliees bare, and he was bareheaded. Shoulders back and chest well out, he jogged along at the steady jog-trot adopted by athletes and prize-fighters who are in training. . . . After you had observed the curious effect this young man produced on the military of all ranks it suddenly struck you that his face was strangely familiar. Then you all at once remembered that you had seen it, hundreds of times, in the magazines and illustrated papers. Under it was the legend ‘His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales- ’ That young man will some day, if he lives, sit in an ancient chair in Westminster Abbey, and the Archbishop of Canterbury will place a crown upon his head, and his picture will appear on coins and postage stamps in 'use over half the globe. Now the future King of England —Edward VIII they may call him—is not getting up at daybreak on these chilly spring mornings and reeling off half a dozen miles or so because he particularly enjoys it. He is doing it with an end in

view. He is doing it for precisely the same reason that the prize-tighter .docs it; ho is training for a battle. . . . He seemed to epitomise the spirit which I found to exist along the whole length of the British battle line. Every British soldier in France has come to realise that he is engaged in a struggle without parallel in history —a struggle in which ho is faced by an enemy formidable, ferocious, resourceful, and unscrupulous, and from which he is by no means certain to emerge a victor. . . . You don’t hear him

singing ‘Tipperary’ any more.” Something stronger has emerged from his first enthusiasm and song—the grim determination to do his duty, to get ready for a long and terrible conflict. And this is the fact which tho Empire has to" face, the grim lesson which every man and woman has to learn, that self-assurance or the shunting of our duty to the shoulders of others will not get our job done. Every man and woman’s aid in the Empire is needed if we are to get honourably through. The indelible mark of this war will not be left by loss of dear ones, or home, or money, or ease or pleasure; but the marie of shame, which no future peace will erase, will be upon those who, in the hour of the nation’s great sorrowing and giving, comforted none, aided none, and took it as their right that other men should die for them, other women be widowed for their safe comradeship, other children than theirs go fatherless. The whole nation must get into training, not part of it; the men and women who are doing the sprinting like it no more than those who are lounging and looking on, even finding excitement in the reading of disaster and death, -and diabolical devil-devices for the torture. It is ‘‘up against” every man and woman throughout the Empire to answer ourselves what we are doing. No other can do our individual part. The right spirit is neither a question of sex nor age nor circumstance.- The schoolboys in some quarters at the Polytechnic schools haye volunteered for warservice, and every alternate day are assisting in the making of shells.

There were strange scenes of enthusiasm and rejoicing in “Little Italy” in London —in that foreign country of Soho and Clerkenwell —when Italy declared war. Many reservists had already started for home, a large 'proportion of whom were Italian waiters and restaurant-keepers, and the West End hotels, whose staffs had already been depleted by the dismissal of German and Austrian waiters and the enlistment of London men, are staffing their hotels with girl waitresses. The majority of managers, too, are staffing their grill rooms, kitchens, and private suites with girls. The ice-cream vendors, who are among the humblest of London Italians, are forming a corps among themselves. One noticeable feature among London’s changes since the war began is the decreased number of barrel-organs in the streets. And of German bands there are, of course, none.

As time goes on the old characteristics will more and more disappear, especially the young man. In the opinion of many the participation of woman on equal terms with man in the work of the country will have a salutary effect; the war is bringing about that principle of co-operation between men and women in the State for which women have contended for so long.