REVALUED IN THE TRENCHES.

Sun (Christchurch), Volume II, Issue 593, 4 January 1916, Page 6

REVALUED IN THE TRENCHES.

ARTIFICIAL LINES DISAPPEAR

Here is a letter to a school-fellow from a Territorial in the trenches, and published in the English "Journal of Education":—

"My dear 'Socrates,' —You will be (surprised at receiving a letter, which j might as well be headed 'Somewhere in Hell,' from a man whose name I you will surely remember, since it stood near your own on every prize list and in every record of school matches for about five years in succession. Then came the cross-roads. You headed for Cambridge and a London parish, while my fortune led me through Oxford and a Classical Mastership to a sub-lieutenancy in the Territorials. "One of my Tommies, who was badly wounded the other day and rescued from the danger-zone by your former 'half-back,' turns out to be a parishioner of yours. His account of your philanthropic energies reminded me so forcibly of the times when you encouraged the 'Soccer' team by Socratic advice that I am templed to write for the purpose of extorting a reply. Several of our contemporaries, whom we used to classify by hasty standards, are out here playing the game under circumstances which are real touchstones of character.

"fnigo Jones, the immaculate. whose name was a passport to West End tailors, is one of the shabbiest men in my platoon. He is smart only in one and the best sense—at pieking oft' more Bodies in one day j than Smithers would miss in a month. You remember Smithers, j the 'bug-hunter'? He threw up an j entomological job at South Kensing- ■ ton, because he heard that the fauna ■of the trenches would repay study. At least, that is the explanation given by his men (he has lately won his second star), and they keep him well supplied with specimens. Then you cannot have forgotten little Abrahams, who by expensive coaching scraped into Sandhurst, but was expelled on account of some financial eccentricity? We find him most useful at interpreting the admissions of German prisoners (when we take any). His grandfather was born in the Frankfurt Ghetto; Ibis makes him as cunning as the Teutons, whom he loathes with compound hatred. "It is wonderful how artificial lines of demarcation tend to merge here in common comradeship. Military arrogance (as the Pacifists call it) is a minus quantity. 'The Terrier' is admitted to share flic kennel of even pedigreed prodigies of the 'Bulldog breed.' We have only one hone to pick—the bones of a Dachshund. . . . "Yours, as yet, "DEMOCRITT'S."