MUSIC OF WAR.

Colonist, Volume LVI, Issue 13592, 6 October 1914, Page 2

MUSIC OF WAR.

The war correspondent of a London paper thus describes "the awful music of war":—"When big guns, field guns, rifles and machine guns were all booming and banging and rattling ■at the same time the noise was tremendous. At the hottest moments it kept changing curiously and horribly in character, volume and tempo, rising and falling with alternating diminuendo- and crescendo, and hurrying and slackening pace. Sometimes the deafening volleys of reports sounded like a clattering ot a clumsy, lumbering- waggon jolting heavily over the ruts of a badly-made country lane; sometimes like the brisk hammering of thousands of hammers on wood, irregular and spasmodic, and then -regular and relentless again; sometimes like the roar of hundreds of hundreds of heavy goods trains thundering and bumping along to meet in hideous collision. Against the changing undercurrent and background of sound and confusion the separate kmds of reports were always distinguishable, the heavy, slow booming of the big euns, the sharp, vicious bang of the field pieces, -with their lightning-hke velocity and .'shattering, irresistible force, the crackling ancL spitting and spluttering snap of the nne. and, most awful ~of all, the rapid, Pjtdess. macnine-like tapping and rattling ot the mitrailleuses." ,

"Mother," said Bobby, after a full week of obedience, "have I been a good boy lately?"" Yes, dear," replied.the mother, "a very, very good boy." "And do you trust me?" he continued. "Why, of course, mother trusts her little boy!" she answered. But the chastened child was not pacified. "I n.-ean really, really trust me, you know;", he explained. "Yes, I really, really trust you," nodded his mother. "Why do yo]u .ask?" - "Just because," said Bobby, diving his hands into his pockets and looking* her in the f&ce. "If you .trust me like you say you tvhy do you go on hiding the jam?" -