THE COMMON PEOPLE.

Timaru Herald, Volume XIIC, Issue 13899, 10 May 1909, Page 6

THE COMMON PEOPLE.

SOME EVERYDAY HEROES

(Bv H. M. T'omlinson, in London "Leader.")

Ib was ten-thirty yesterday morning, and we were in a first-class smokci coming up from outer Surrey. Hie compartment was half full. London, 12 miles away,- had been working hard for the past Ave hours, and, it may be, had been .succeeding pretty well without us; for we represented the class which, so the books of political economy tell us, supply the " administrative capacity," which, as you know, absorbs, properly, much of the nation s wealth in the form of "wages of ability." (This is 110 laughing matter.) I don't know how my travelling companions get their bread. I see them every morning. They are never in a hurry. Apparently, they fear no boss. They are hearty fellows,, and I get on very well with them; but they never bring a book with them, never discuss art or life, and to me they look far too prosperous" and assured of themselves for .their work to be anything but easy, artificial, and unnecessary: the

sort of busy-ncss which is of more profit to themselves than to the community. As for my work, it is manifest, and J do not defend myself. You may easily guess what newspapers we were reading, and so you may judge rightly ihat our vital concern with life is finance, sport, and, in lighter moments (when our laughter comes to us) with sex problems. "Nasty colliery accident in the north, I see," said one. "Yes, bad business, that," said his neighbour. Nobody else took any notice. The King's speech was the chef d'oeuvre in yesterday's papers. Sometimes we are interested in politics, and just now we are wondering " what Lloyd George is going to do." We discussed that. What we said doesn't matter. Broadly, speaking, we are apprehensive and bitter —even threatening. We advise him "not to try it on." The country (which is ourselves) won't stand it. '' There is too much of that d —d Socialism about." After another little pause (the colliery disaster forgotten), the man who had nearly filled one rack with, golf clubs, said something unpleasant about some workmen who had been repairing his billiard-room. "And these arc the fellows they want to get into the House," said this man, with a laugh. "Yes," said another, "you can't trust the common people. They are not fit to govern. -I say you can't get statesmen except from the class which is trained for the job. It's a matter of blood and breeding. You could never trust these workmen. What you say is proof of it." . - lam a journalist. I have spoken (my personal friends would assure you earnestly that I tell you this in no boasting spirit) with bishops ' and earls. 1 was forced to go and see them, y?\ l ln }~ derstand. I have met politicians in plenty; the fellows smoking round a Press Club fire could tell you a thing or two; but they won't. ■ And, all in the week's- work, I have been where there was storm and shipwreck, at the pithead after an explosion, present when, simply because they _ stuck to their job, the mangled remains of the enginemen were hauled out of the debris ; trusted to that extent, you see anyhow. I paw Welsby, of Normanton go to his death in the burning Birmingham mine, in an effort to save the comrades he must have known were dead; and once a group of us listened to a sailor, rescued from the wreck of the Berlin, who told us how some German women on board saved the lives of the English crew. The sailor broke down as he told us; the pressmen around him were a hard-bitten lot, and it was curious to note their efforts for composure and professional unconcern. Coming home there was no comment on the incident, but from one man, a Tory and a military expert; _ and, said he, vehemently and aggressively, suddenly breaking a long silence, "I don't care now if there is a German invasion. We're not fit to write about these German women." We were not either. We left the story simply in the sailor's own words.

" I thought of those common people of Germany, those common Teuton women, When the golfer spoke of "fitness. I thought of Welsby as he came, for the last time to the pit-mouth, his harness on his hack, and of the whitefaced women who silently watched him ; I thought of the men who were around me then (they aire common enough in colliery disasters), cursing the management aloud for not letting them go down also to their mates; there, indeed were tne men on tne footplate of our train, watchful and keen, keeping our luck; there were, 1 remembereu, my good friends in every sea, common follows every one, who would only put tlicir quicl in the other cheek when tney met calamity, and watch for a chance to cheat tlie tates of some of the wreckage —not fit to be trusted standing by tiio furnaces and on tho fo'castle head, often very weary, but always alert to thwart the ancient, enemy, of the dead in. South Africa, who got nothing but some cheers at Southampton and the Guildhall, and who knew, if England kept its reputation, they would get nothing more; or my stokers on the cruiser. Berwick, trimming in the bunkers all night at Lagos, keeping full steam , all day, thirty-six hours at a stretch.

All these Nobodies; the common people, the most ancient family in England, who came over with William the Norman, and were here before lie c.ame, are still intent on their necessary but unnoticed tasks, so usually heroic and noble when the call comes -to liim that we omit to notice they do anything, as though ■ we expected nobility of simple and artless men; or, if we d') cheer them, then but to find they hlu's-i----and hide themselves. The host of tlu unimportant, "the great unwashel," "the common people," who maki tho corn grow, and clothe us, who sail our ships, dig our, iron and coal, and turn the world round. And there was that young and amiable- golfer saying 'v.c • couldn't trust them." As if wo or :r do anything else! As if we could live if Ave didn't F

"couldn't trust tlicm "—the men who. his paper was then telling li 1 u had died to fill his coal-scuttle; tho,e common folk who make' secure his superior vantage by sacrificing most of what joy and light there is in the only life they may get; keep him aloft and out of the mud, and save him lrom sweat and grime; there was lie, putting tlieni down as incapable of managing their own affairs, when they manage his so well for him; making the enroll sweet and safe for him, giving him "finance" to play with, and doing it all for him, these Nobodies, so uncomplainingly and ungrudgingly, that he thinks his golf course, his first-class ticket, his whole ease of life and good fortune, come to him as the reward of God, because of his manifold virtues. i shall not see the scene at this wrepked mine on fire. .But 1 know what one would find there. There will bo the dead below, and above at the pithead the pale wives and terrified children of these dead Nobodies; and with them :i crowd of fellows, all common chaps froir. mean and dirty streets, clog fanciers and pigeon flyers, gamblers on a. Sunday, the police keeping the 111 forcibly back, angry and mutinous, from the work of rescue. These are the folk who save one lrom despair when the papers are full of aristocratic sex tpuKzles.