“ALIEN'S” LETTER FROM ENGLAND.

Otago Witness, Issue 3214, 20 October 1915, Page 69

“ALIEN'S” LETTER FROM ENGLAND.

ON THE LONDON ROAD.

August 24. “All roads lead to London’’ the saying s; the road to fame and the road to ruin .mong others; but this particular road legins at the coast and Dover, and ends t the City Wonderful, and all the business >f England seems to pass between. Less ban two miles away the Channel proudly weeps the British shores, holding the seas all free to our ships. Grim guns face om our fortresses that would contest the Jvance of an enemy on every wave, lover Castle guards the harbour; warraft keep sentinel where last summer vhite-winged pleasure craft and peaceful ishing boats rode at anchor, and every :our the iron humming-birds pass over the due dome of the sky; pass so frequently .hat the labourers in the fields scarcely ,!ance up from their harvesting or peapicking to see the marvels of the air. “There be summat doin’ !” called an old man seated on a bench by the roadside following ray gaze as an aeroplane hummed through the blue space over the peaceful harvest landscape immune from the devastations of war. “There be summat doin’, sartin. Laarst nighty I be Wakened from sleep by guns, an’ since ever it be daybreak them there ’planes a’ bin’ parsin’ over.” Something doing, indeed ; something that the daily published news has not included, but has been brought in by the motor cars and waggons and ca.rts from the coast; something that explains the midnight booming of the guns and the Zeppelin engines near enough to hear. But there is always something doing on the London road, "great things some of them, with one end in the mighty city and the other end in the Channel. Along the road by night go great wains, or waggons, loaded so heavily that the ground trembles as they pass. They pass to the coast, which they will reach by dawn, and come by the way from London. And nights when word comes that an air raid is expected each car and every vehicle is stopped and challenged as it passes through the village, and the challenge and the throbbing engines bsneath the window become part of a troubled dream that is neither sleeping nor waking. England at war. Men keeping ceaseless watch by night and day on land and sea from fortress and from battleship and coastguard stations and tower, while shepherds sleep beside their sheep and the labourers go home to their supper and their rest. This particular part of the London road runs thi’ough a village, some of the houses and the church of which stood hundreds of years ago. Two miles distant is the landing place of Julius Caesar, now a quaint old town, and on shore where now the sprats and the mackerel burst the fisherman’s nets and the lifeboats go out to the rescue. Of the early Britons whom Caesar encountered here we are the descendants. Dole, Dola, or Dale was the name of this ancient place when Julius Caesar effected a landing on August 26, 55 8.C., and the characteristics of the Britons on the east coast as recorded of them “not naturally of a ferocious disposition, but without the faintest instincts of civilisation; yet capable of fighting with a resolution and a determined bravery which we might almost regard as the earliest development of that British characteristic —pluck. Such, in short, were the people with whom Julius Cmsar had to contend upon his first coming to these shores of Albion, and small is the wonder that even his bands of trained warriors should have felt a trifle dismayed on the first sight of the great hordes of stalwart creatures who, with bhie bodies and tangled hair, stood drawn up in threatening masses ready to oppose the landing of that intrepid Roman chieftain.’’ We are the descendants of those painted, naked, tangled-haired warriors, to whom the Romans brought knowledge of culture and art. Many a fierce conflict has been waged between the inhabitants of this country and foreign invaders on the shores round about. The ground teems with relics of wars before and after Christ. On the sandhills in the remains of the Roman Barrows a few feet below the present surface these tombs have revealed shields, and armour, and coins bearing the date, “a.d. 275,’’ and weapons in the time of Caesar; also urns and fine samples of Roman ware. The characteristics of the early inhabitants of the eastern coasts have undergone some refining process, but the great British characteristic, pluck, which Caesar had to encounter on his first landing on these shores has undergone no fining down. The dwellers in hollow trees and mud huts repelled an invasion of their “splendid isolation’’ with the same vigour that would be shown to-day with guns instead of bow and arrows should the German Caesar make his approach. The men of the eastern shores of England have ever taken their place in the history of England’s courage. On land and sea they have faced death unflinchingly, and thousands are doing and dying to-day in France and Flanders and Gallipoli, true men of Kent, whose mariners have been famous among those that go down to the sea in shins. Dover, Folkstone, Walmor, Deal, Sandwich, Ramsgate, Margate, Shorncliff. Sheerness, are names intimately acquainted with the war. This little village on the London road, nine miles from Dover, and its busy small coastal town less than two miles away, is a delusion and a snare as far as quiet is concerned. Tucked into the fold of a vale through which ■ the high road runs, its cottages and villas and mansions all nestling among ancient trees, its gardens all abloom with old-fashioned flowers—sweet williams, phlox, lavender, hollyhocks, sunflowers, and Michaelmas daisies, etc., —the unwary stranger from the city, with eyes feasting on the surrounding fields of scented red clover and

(Specially Written for the Ladies’ Page.)

, wheat gold in the ear, sayb, Mere is peace.” But should the silent night a-s Nature made it, dewy and perfumed and star-lit, pass without the booming of guns and rattling o! windows from their explosions or the hooting of horns from the Channel or passing of swift or rumbling vehicles, the dawn is broken with the shuffling of many feet and many voices. The fruit-pickers and pea-pickers, an army of men, women, ana children, are off to their long day’s work in the fields, talking and whistling as they go, for despite the war and the toil, the joy of life in the warm aromatic dawn is hard to kill. A little later come the market carts with their dairy and produce for the town, crunching over the stones, the farmer with his sun-burnt wife beside him, whistling all out of tune, ‘‘Who’s your lady friend?” or ‘‘lt’s a long, long way to Tipperary.” You turn on your country feather bed and sniff the ea'ly morning dust that comes in through the wide-open window disturbed by the cj’des and motor cars that are already tearing along at their breakneck speed on their two or three hours’ journey to London, their, hoots and screeches drowning as they pass the persistent inquiry of a rooster next door, ‘‘How’d you do-o-o?” In a transient lull you doze again, and are startled by a voice at the open bedroom window humming “Who’s your lady friend?” It is 6 o’clock, and the painter man has commenced work. It is writing day, and he always chooses this cottage on writing day 7, beginning at the bedroom window. He has been painting within ear-shot for the last four weeks or more at the dozen cottages or so that form our portion of the village. Painting is a quiet occupation, tending, one' would suppose, to reflection. But this painter has no time for reflection, and very_ little for painting, for eveiybody knows him. Men riding on cycles and men on foot, the early morning milkman and the butchers and bakers, grocers and laundrymen and delivery vans who come up from town —and people appear to come up from town during the day—fishmonger and every other kind of monger, scandal-monger among them. As they call on the village in the morning for orders they open tthe conversation, and continue it as they return with goods anytime and at all times during day. Left alone the painter man would simply whistle or burst into sudden musical queries and affirmations such as “Who’s your lady friend?” or ‘‘My heart’s right there,” which after 30 or 40 days does not startle so much as it did at first, after the seclusion and quiet of a London flat. All the news of the night arid the day before is brought ‘‘right there,” as well as the painter’s heart, long before the newspapers arrive from London, and a good deal of news that the newspapers do not contain. “Mamin’, Bill.” i “Mamin’.” ’ “It be goin’ to be warm.” “It be.” 1 A pause. “You’re still on the job?” Which he is, as eyes, ears, and nostrils testify. “ ’Eard the news. Zeppelins at and laarst night. Forty killed, mostly wimmen and childer, they do say. Tumble. Well, I must be gettin’ along. If this weather ’olds there’ll be a fine ’arvest.” He gets along, so do the milk carts and other carts. Then a wag calls out from one of them: “Give that as your permanent address in the National Registration paper, Bill.” “Mamin’,” says Bill. ’Eard the news?” And he repeats it. The cart drives on, ■ and brisk footsteps pause; 1 “Good morning, Bill.” “Marnin’. It’s going to be warm. Good weather for the ’arvest. Bad news this forty bombs dropped on and many killed. We don’t seem to be getting along much.” “We’re all right, Bill. You wait, the Russians know what they’re up to. Heard of their naval victory? Yes, in the Gulf of Riga. Dreadnought sunk by a British submarine. Enemy withdraws after heavy loss. That pays them off for El 3. Zeppelin .shot down, too.” The cottage door on the left opens, and the neat housewife gets busy on her brass and steps talking all the time to Bill. A good many things get talked over, harmlessly and ineffectively, and the early news of the day is repeated. Then the very deaf old lady from the right comes out and forces upon Bill and upon me the information that she doesn’t like . to complain about anyone, and forthwith complains in gramophone tones it is hopeless to escane. Comnlains of the bitterness and loneliness of age and the selfishi ness of youth, and the painter man does i more painting that he has done for the last hour—for he paints and says nothing. Pei’haps, because he knows the hopelessness of what he might say being heard by her, and by all the village beside. Perhaps the summer morning and the brighter news, has put Bill out of touch ; with grumblers. So the gramophonic I tones move on, and fastening on a fresh- : faced girl begins the complaint again, “I : don’t like to say anything about anyone, ; hut ” she says it. A little later the ! young lady abused nuts her head out of I the window and calls out to the brighti faced girl that she is going to bike over • to Dover for the day, hut not to tell “them.” Whoever “them” might be it ! was impossible for them not to know if ! they lived anywhere near. T am further ! informed later on through the wall that ■ the doctor says she is run down, and must i go away ; that she is going to London, ; and that her mother is a miserable old ) untruth-teller, that everybody tells lies, i and she doesn’t believe anybody, and other family and village information.

“Hallo, Bill, how’re you getting along? I like that now the brown’s in.” It is the postman. He has brought letters with the news of the London raid. And I go down to breakfast, and am absorbed in the reading when “Who’s your lady friend?’’ sounds outside the window. Bill has descended the ladder. Soon he is joined outside the garden hedge by another man of his craft, and displays to Bill, and whoever else it may interest, the wallpaper he is going to the hospital to put on the walls of the private room of the sister-in-charge, and over my tea and toast I have an opportunity of viewing it before I see it in the room itself. It looks very well, is the impartial verdict of the judges outside. They thought that particular shade of pink went well with that particular shade of blue. There is a good deal of the hospital business discussed, and the news as far as I know it is fairly correct. It doubtless conies from the soldiers themselves, to whom the villagers show the warmest hospitality when permission is given for visiting, the humblest host and hostess making a little feast within hospital regulations. The pretty daughter of this cottage is supposed to be favoured by the visits of a certain Lancashire lad through the intermediary of a friend of the sister-in-charge ; but that is not so, as all invitations and their acceptances are considered on their own merits. Not the least interesting feature of this portion of the London road is its proximity to several military hospitals, marine barracks, and large encampments. Now it is the convalescents who walk by in chai’ge of their nurses; now they are driven out to amusements organised for their entertainment: now the charabanc loads of tourists, chiefly middle-aged men. Old men and women rise in their seats as they pass the hospital gardens and lustily cheer the wounded in their lounge chairs, or at their games. Now goes past a fresh load from Shorncliff, which is now the Canadian base this side of the Channel, and the hospitals here are now chiefly for the accommodation of Canadians whom the Prime Minister of Canada (Mr Borden) visited the other day, expressing himself well pleased at the happy appearance of the men. When it is not the men who have returned from the war who go by, it is the men -who are going. A company of marines in navy blue marching to their own whistling; a regiment of mounted khaki boys with transport waggons coming from “Somewhere” to “Somewhere,” who halt in the village to water their horses. And all the village women—especially the girls—-are ready with offers of their water supply. “Well, Bill, how are you getting on? This is good news, glorious news.” (It is the North Sea success that followed the Baltic victory.) “We want it,” said Bill. “We want it. And if other such is sloav of coming,” replied the master graiuer, who represents a large class of intelligent working folk of England, “make no mistake, we shall hear of such victories. . . . The cost in money as in men, depend upon it, is pooled. The banks are allied as are the men and the countries. Loss! It is ” an unspeakable words. “But there’s this to our gains : the nations trust us, and it’s for generations. And the Germans have got to pay for generations for to-day.” “Hallo. Bill. ’Eard as 'ow Jim was wounded? An’ Bob—killed? Ts mother’s in a great way. An’ Garge, ’e’s ’listed. ’Ad to, to saave the nane of ’im. When compulsion comes I beant theer, ses ’e.” And so from the cottage window on the road between the Channel and London one hears the echoes of the world, feels the pulse of the nation. It is not a sluggard pul e. Who talks of indifference is not in touch. Imperturbability and indifference are two distinct states—one does not care, and the other caring everything does its daily duty come good, come evil. Bill paints on through news of defeat or victory. When it is defeat he hums “It’s a long, long wav to Tipperary,” when the news is good “Who’s your lady friend?”

ANSWERS TO CORRESPONDENTS. Mary.—Your question as to whether it is the duty of every woman to use her personal influence to .induce her men folk, relations and friends, to enlist, is a. difficult one to answer. Personally, I have never asked any man to go, and think fhe man who mustbe coaxed and cajoled by his women-folk to do a man’s duty not the likely sort to win the Distinguished Service Medal. Until the country commands every man suitable, by compulsory service to the defence of home and country, the women (many of whom Would willingly serve themselves) are placed at a disadvantage who urge the reluctant men to fight. They urge a man iierhaps to his death, perhaps to his wounding, most certainly to his discomfort. And if he died or were disabled or his life disorganised, “tho woman tempted me” might still be the reproach. A woman’s indirect influence is the most potent influence. By holding tho right near enough for him to perceive and acknowledge it a woman triumphs with the man, and not by persuasion or cajolery. And unless the State put the burden justly and equally upon all it seems to me that a man should volunteer of his own conviction, of his own choice. It is his own life that he offers. It is an unanswered question who

should go or who should stay till the State has answered it.