"ALIEN'S" LETTER FROM ENGLAND.

Otago Witness, Issue 3338, 6 March 1918, Page 51

"ALIEN'S" LETTER FROM ENGLAND.

(Specially Written for the Ladies' Page.) ' December 17. TONICS. Amid all the agonies and horrors and anxieties of this terrible war we Christians of the British Empire, of whatever sect, have felt a thrill of religious joy that Jerusalem has fallen into our hands. What history, what tradition, what sacred association gathers round the city overlooking the Valley of Kedron! It stirs our hearts with the most sacred emotion to think that the followers of the despised and rejected One, Who was driven without its gates under the load of His Cross to suffer execution, have come back in triumph in the eyes_ of all the world. And that the Holy City should have been taken by the British without a desecrating touch will earn the gratitude of the whole of Christendom.

One turns from the contemplation of the Easte to the Western front with human shrinking from 'a shambles. The wounded —terribly wounded men and officers—who have come back or "home" for the first time are evidence of how terrible is the fighting. Every hospital bed is needed every nurse. The taking of Jerusalem has acted as a tonic on the depression which followed the* reverse of Italy, the defection of Russia, and the nearer troubles, of Cambrai. As Germany admits, it is a " moral victory." And in the churches and cathedrals—-Catholic and Church of England—there were thanksgiving and reverent joy differing from the rejoicing over the taking of any other place. The taking of the Holy City has been a moral tome, an omen of good, a foreshadowing of the triumph of the right over wrong. The religious see in it the fulfilment of prophecy, and the mystic reads into it meaning that cannot be expressed in military significance. And at this most critical hour of the Empire's fortunes we need our tonics, religious and human —men and women who persistently light the lamps in, the darkness and support the feeble-kneed who are incapable of self-support at every fresh alarm. There ought to be a new petition introduced into Litany for the duration of the war—- " From all croaiers and nerve-destroyers detractors, the "told-you-so " of evil, who for the most part are of ths class who are neither fighting nor sacrificing their lives in any other way, but are depending on those who are. Hasn't every Briton a right to his own opinion? Not at all, unless his opinion is an honest one, for the very freedom in which he can express his opinion has been bought by the blood of his country, and is held- by the blood of his kin: and the right of free speech, like other rights, is very often put to an unjustifiable misuse to womid and weaken both neighbour and country. The day of trouble and time of affliction is an illchosen time, either of abuse of friend or countiy. When a man is in the ditch is not the . moment to moralise on his fall; ho wants a leg-up. When you have helped him from the mud and set him on the high road, then is the time to trounce iim for his folly. The Empire at this fiour is in the ditch dug for us by Germany. It fell blindly, easily, indulgently,

and ignorantly. in; it wants helping out. You and I help it by every word of hope, by every word of trust, by every deed of gratitude, in work or money —■ gratitude for all Britain has given you from the past—your home, your country, your present security. He that is not with us is against us; and there are a lot of " conscientious objectors" besides those who have so declared themselves —to escape the fighting—men and women who are always on the lookout for excuses for the enemy, and who palliate Germany's crimes. Germany needs no defender. The Boche has proved quite capable of defending and excusing his own vilenessee. We need all our breath for the cooling of our own broth, and the encouraging of our own heroes and those leaders who are living to win the war. Our greatest morality is to win this war for democracy, the freedom of the future, to break the power of the oppressor. We are told to forgive our enemies, but we are nowhere told to forgive the enemies of God, which are the enemies of the progression of mankind towards the good. Among the stumbling-blocks at the present hour are the political, social, and domestic croakers. Some of them remind one of the old man who couldn't enjoy the comforts and security of his old age for worrying about what would happen when he was dead! If he were buried on a work-day it would be inconvenient for the boys to go to, the funeral; if he were buried on a wet day it would spoil their Sunday black; if he were buried on a fine day it would hinder their work on the

land, and his life was one moan—" Oh, dear me! Whatever shall I do wnen I'm dead':" And some of us are of like mind, who cannot enjoy or possess anything, fearing for its loss. For possession is of the spirit, and there is no other surety of good in the fufure save the fact of good in the past, and British courage has never yet failed, nor endurance. I know a dear little woman who always puts on her smartest clothes on dreary days. "Oh, well," she explained in reply to a question, everybody in the trains and buses look so dowdy on wet days that I always wear my hat with flowers or bright colours in them to cheer things up a bit.. Most people wear their pretty things on a fine day." It is easy for us to be courageous in the sunshine; easy to be brave where there is no danger'; easy to bear other people's sorrows; eaJfy _ to sleep in peace when there are no. anxieties, and it is an easy patriotism that shouts. " Rule, Britannia" in days of peace; but it is the men who go down to the sea in ships, and the men who face the hell of battle, and wrestle with the problems of this great war, and do its work and minister to its needs, even its need of cheerful hope—these are they who have the- rights of Empire • these are they who will save the nation. We are in for a bad time, and we have got to bear it.. Cheerfully may be beyond human possibility, but helpfully we must bear it. If Ave can do nothing ourselves efficiently we can at least help thoso who can, and wear our brightest colours on the dreariest days. To turn our saddest side, our desponding side, our inefficient side, our "seamy side" to our neighbour is taking it for granted that he is stronger than we, strong enough to bear his own burden and ours, too. There is one strengthening knowledge that we have to sustain us, and that is that we could have done no other than enter the war. Mr Asquith, in a recent speech, said that he has often gone over in memory those momentous days at the end of July and beginning of August, 1914, when 'history will record that the fortunes of freedom, and, indeed, the fate of civilisation, hung in the balance. "I

say deliberately," he added, " that with all the knowledge we now have of the unimagined horrors of a world-wide war, if I had to live the time over again I should take the same course. Has it been, is it worth while? some people will ask. My answer is, without doubt or hesitation, Yes, subject only to one condition—that the war ends in a peace which secures the attainment of our original purpose, and which contains in itself the safeguards of its own permanence." We must not be war-weary, we women, but fight our fatigue of spirit and our sadness as we so often fight our fatigue of body. We are needed, every one. We hoped to spend this Christmas in reunion with our dear ones; but it cannot be. I was struck with the plucky reply of a munition girl to the King the other day when visiting her explosive factory. His Majesty asked her if she was nervous of being blown up, and she answered that she was "getting used tp it," as she had already been blown up and injured three times. While girls and women are cheerfully working for the war under these conditions, how feeble to let our lesser ills and demands overwhelm us! /This girl said she " liked " her woi'k, and insisted upon going back to it after each recovery from her wounds. She liked her work, she said, because it was helping the boys to save England. If we cannot save the Empire—and we shall not if we slacken —we can " quit ourselves like men" and women trying to do so. Not a man, not a woman who lives, or expects to live, the same life-they did before the war deserve

that others should save their home and their country for them. Why should some bask in the sunshine and idleness while others toil and sacrifice to save them? Each individual who has, the right of citizenship in the Eimpire has also a duty to the State. Unless we are craven we cannot accept our country's protection and refuse our support in her hour of need. I think we shall hear little of the bells of victory for a long while to come. The hardest, bitterest, saddest time of the war is to be lived through yet. To be lived through manfully and womanfully, and the full measure of a Briton, man or woman, is hard to beat. So we shall overcome, not by sloth, nor by repining, nor by holding on to our " rights " in ease or luxury at the cost of others. It is a mean-souled "patriot" who refuses to pay the debt to country.

Great honour was paid to the 700 survivexs of the first seven divisions who fought in the war as they inarched through London's cheering crowds on Saturday afternoon to the Albert Hall. That the crowds were composed chiefly of girls, women, boys, and old men is significant of the times. The triumphant, progress of the men of Mons and the Marne, who in the first days of the war stayed the Kaiser's rush on Paris and to the coast, brought tears a 3 well . as cheers—so shall we greet our returning armies when fighting is over. No such enthusiasm has been seen in our streets since the war began, and the soldiers were smiling as they waved their hands to the crowd as they passed along the embankment. Shortly after noon the famous Seven Hundred were entertained to luncheon by the Lord Mayor, who presided at the Cannon Street Hotel, and it was in the march afterwards to the Albeit Hall, where the survivors took part in a choral commemoration, that the public took part. The honours were for the men who had fought and suffered. The King and Queen and other notable men and women were present to meet them, and quite 10,000 soldiers and their friends of the fallen and living packed the great hall from ceiling to floor. In the programme of choral commemo-

ration "Beatrix Brice" expressed the feelings of the nation in the lines — O little mighty Force that stood for England; That, with your bodies for a living shield, Guarded her slow awaking, that defied The sudden challenge of tremendous odds, And fought the rushing legions to a stand —• Then stark in grim endurance held the line. O littlo Force that in your agony Stood fast while England girt her armour on, i Held high our honour in your wounded hands, Carried our honour safe with bleeding feet — "We have no glory great enough for you, The- very soul of Britain keeps your day! O little mighty Force, your, way is ours, Thia land inviolate- your monument. Mr Balfour read the familiar chapterin praise of famous men from the Book of Ecclesiasticus in the Apocrypha. Following him, Lord Derby took up his stand on the conductor's box and read out the Order of Battle of the First Seven Divisions. Up to this point the proceedings had ; been "piano'.'; now elements of "forte" and "giocoso" were introduced. Cheering broke out at once for Sir John French, Sir Archibald Murray, the Chief of tho General Staff, and, Sir Nevil Macrcady, Adjutant-general. The names of Haig (then commanding First Army), Robertson (then Quartermaster-general), N and SmithDorrien (then commanding Second Army) } were received with a roar. For each regiment and battalion mentioned, for each battery, for every unit in that roll of honour, there was a cry of welcome from | some part of the .hall. | Lord Derby, smiled and .paused good- ; naturedly at the interruptions. Once he | made a mistake in a figure, and said to

himself quite audibly, "As you were," as became a Secretary of State for War. This reading was an excellent idea. How many valiant memories, were conjured up by it! Memories that will for ever be joined with the regiments that left them on record. "L" Battery had a special cheer. Was it because of that gallant orchard-fight at Nery? We should have liked to shout for the Fifteenth Hussars in celebration of their fine feat when they rescued the Munsters near Bergues. So with almost every name there was intertwined some recollection of tough, dogged courage, some proof of steadiness, some thrilling illustration of the old adage that the British soldier "never knows when he's beat."

So to the end. A hymn sung by everybody, "For all the saints who from, their labours rest," with its moving suggestion of warriors at peace after struggle. Then the "Reveille," far better than the "Last Post." There can be no "Last Post" for the First Seven Divisions until the British Empire has crumbled into the likeness of Nineveh and Babylon, until the records are extant no longer of the glory that was England and the devotion which made her sons great.