AN UNASSUMING GENERAL

Sun (Christchurch), Volume II, Issue 563, 29 November 1915, Page 6

AN UNASSUMING GENERAL

COMRADELY SIR JOHN FRENCH.

An English war correspondent, speaking of Sir John French, and his interest in the soldiers in the field; says: "At the time of the first battle of Ypres, he watched, close up at the front, the critical moment of the day. Any morning at headquarters, if you walk out before breakfast past his door, you may see the sentries present arms and the.-motor with the Union Jack on it drive up. The commander-in-chief, long before you were up, has beenout somewhere at his lines. Or you are driving, along some straight poplarfenced road, and you come on some improvised parade-ground. The troops are drawn up—come out, perhaps, from some hot corner of the trenches; there is a little group of staff officers; in front, his; cap a little on one side, very short and straight luid slockish, with a fine truculence of manner and, a sterling directness of * fSjVttech, Sit John French will be talking to his men. There is nothing perfunctory about the ceremony, no feeling that it is n necessary duty on the one' side, no assumed decorum on the other. He is there because he wants to meet them and speak to them, and they want to hear what he says. When you listen you feel that if he wanted to curse instead of commend, he he would not have the slightest hesitation in doing it soundly, and the men would know that he meant what he said. A word from him is somehow of more value than a column from a more rhetorical general. The last-joined private will feel that there is an essential com'"union and sympathy in endeavour between, his general ancf him."

ing was flooded with exuberant song, he was transported by his trumpery toy; Bill lived, his whole person surged With a vitality impossible to stem.

We came in line with a row of cottages, soldiers' billets for the most part, and the boys were not yet in bed. It was a place to sing something great; something in sympathy with our own mood. The song when it came was appropriate; it came from one voice, and hundreds took it up furiously as if they intended to tear it to pieces:—

Here we arc, hour we are, here we are again!

The soldiers not in bed came out to look at us; it made us feel noble; but to me, with that feeling of nobility there came something pathetic, an influence of sorrow that caused my song to dissolve in a vague yearning that still had no separate existence of its own. It was as yet one with the. night, with my mood and the whole spin of things; the song rolled on: Fit and well, and feeling as right as rain, Now we're all together; never mind the weather, Since here we are again. When there's trouble brewing, when there's something doing, Ale we down-hearted? No! let them all coin e! Here we are, here we are, here we are again! As the song died away I felt very lonely, a being isolated. True there was a barn with cobwebs on its raf> ters down the road, a snug farm where they made fresh butter and sold new-laid eggs. But there was something in the night, in the ghostly moonshine, in the bushes out in the fields, nodding together as if in consultation, in the tall poplars, the straight road, the sound of rifle firing to rear and the song sung by the tired boys coming back from battle that filled me with infinite pathos and a feeling of being alone in a shelterless world. "Here we are, here we are again." IMliought of Mervin and six others dead, and their white crosses, and I found myself weeping silently like a child.