THE OUTBREAK OF WAR

Southland Times, Issue 17764, 24 September 1914, Page 7

THE OUTBREAK OF WAR

LONDON NOTES. (Sydney Sun Correspondent.) LONDON, August 6. KING GEORGE'S SAGACITY. From first to last the King never appeared until his signature had to be affixed to proclamations, or until his subjects begged a glimpse of him on the balcony at the Palace. Until the full history of those last over-wrought days are written, the people as a whole will pevcr know how much they owe to the sagacity, the steadiness, and the energies of their Sovereign. Frail though lie may sometimes look in physique, King George is as tough as the toughest hickory. For four days on end lie could not have had more than an hour’s fitful sleep. His Ministers motored across from Downing street at all hours of the day and night.. Three mornings in succession the Prime Minister was closeted with the King at ."> a. m, Mr Asquith, in fact, could not keep tip the pace, and some of his colleagues had to wait upon King George. The most perfect system of news getting was provided at the Palace. Tapes from all the news agencies, telephones from the Foreign Office, telegraphs from the Central Telegraph Office all ended in the King’s study at the Palace; there was no item of information, real or imaginery, official or unofficial, with which he was not instantly acquainted; his vigil was ceaseless, his energy exhaustless, his good humour endless; he cheered his Ministers, and by his splendidly-compacted messages to the Army and Navy lie heartened the nation’s defenders, and it was at his instance more than that of the Ministry, that Lord Kitchener was appointed Secretary of War, to the great delight of his fellow-countrymen. THE STUBBORN ENGLISHMAN. Drake was not an accident: he was a type. The naval fight could wait until he had finished his game of bowls. The average Englishman, though immensely interested by the swift plunge of the world into bloody conflict, was not to he weaned from his sports and pastimes at once. The normal natural life flowed on tranquilly beneath the surface excitement. Kent and Surrey fought their matches over again before hosts of enthusiasts. Racecourses were thronged with speculating turfites. The theatres enjoyed their usual treasury receipts. August Bank Holiday found England on the brink of the precipice, but it never occurred to the ordinary populace to postpone their customary pleasure-making. The excursion trains went away bulging with passengers. Hampstead Heath and Bpping Forest and Wimbledon Common were trampled by tens of thousands of merry feet. As the day wore on and the homecoming began, the ordinary holiday crowds in tlie Strand were swelled to gigantic proportions, so that war editions of the evening papers might be eagerly snapped up and bolted whole. There was same patriotic roystering, but very little. There were pilgrimages to the War Office and the Admiralty, and Downing street, and Buckingham Palace. The people wanted to cheer their chosen chiefs, and to pay their rough homage to their King and Queen. The stranger within the gates, lurking slyly in London as a spy. could only have told his Government that the whole moral and physical and material strength of the British nation lay behind the British declaration of war. London, the capital of the world, was worthy of its history. WOMEN’S PITEOUS PART.

Mobilisation has wrung the hearts of millions of women. In Furopc the best part of 12,000,000 men have been pressed into active service. A gentleman who came from St, Petersburg- through Berlin and Paris to London, said that the only thing the countries through which he passed had in common were weeping women. For 1500 miles he was forced witness of an endless succession of heartbreaking partings. In Great Britain mobilisation has been undertaken and completed with the most extraordinary celerity and smoothness. Men haveviisappeared from their homes and their daily toil' :uul joined their regiments at their different barracks without the faintest sign of any social dislocation. The heads of the British Army merit the gratitude of the nation for the perfection of their plans. At the same time there arc few families in Bngland who have not cause to know that war is upon us. 1 had occasion to employ an emergency typist. Ho told me, in the evening, that his five brothers, who are all naval reservists, and who arc all married, had been summoned to the great naval bases. T waited for him the next evening in vain, lie also was a territorial reserve, and had gone the same way as his brothers. But in Kngiand there hnl? been no hardship in the homes, no compulsion upon the consciences of men. Kverywhere there has been joyous compliance with the mobilisation order. In Prance and Itussia i( lias been the same. But in Germany and Austria, with their large infusion of Serbs, there has been a trail of blood wherever the rounding-up officers have gone. Serbs have refused to fire upon their brothers in blood, and they have been shot down as they stood. Not hundreds. but thousands of men have been coerced into taking their stand beneath a ha ted Hag to attack their own compatriots.