PHYSICAL COURAGE.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 11685, 29 April 1916, Page 8

PHYSICAL COURAGE.

". Jn the Old Country of late much consideration has been given to tho subject pf : physical courage. The late. Richard Harding Davis—a veteran of many campaigns—always contended that physical courage was a very common virtue, and he stated that he had only come.across two cases of men being really terrified by ■ approaching deatlr. In the 'olden days when a battle seldom lasted more than a day the test, if severe., was short; to-day it is very severe and 'prolonged; But that is to consider the matter as it affects a force, and not as it affects an individual. Since the outbreak of this titanic struggle many men have set down their impressions of the first engagement. Most of them admit a peculiar lack of muscular control and a feeling that they were being carried along, by the movement of the mass, but, apparently, in modern warfare the first test of physical courage comes before the actual fighting eventuates."*

A correspondent of the ,; Westminster Gazette " has divided the initiation into actual "fighting into three stages:—(l) First time in the trenches; (2) being shelled in the trenches; (3) advancing from a trench into the open

unde,* fire. The entry into the trenches is made at night, and that adds to the severity of the test. But in most cases the soldier must march many a weary mile to get into the firing line and afeeling of intense weariness often submerge- every other feeling. The second test, the correspondent says, is the hardest that the soldier is called upon to undergo. The fact that ihe shell can be heard,..appro'aching and the feeling of inability to strike back affect tho soldier in s the trenches, and when to these trials is added the sight, and possibly the cries of the wounded, a man must get a good hold upon himself and just hang on.

Many men have testified to the peculiar spirit of elation produced by a bayonet charge, and there appears to be unanimity of opinion that the period of waiting preceding the order to charge is a far greato:- test of a man's courage than is the charge itself. The correspondent adds: "With few exceptions the man who denies that he has experienced! a feeling of physical feav is a braggart, but the average man having passed through the various emotional phases which at length produce a permanent mental attitude, composed of bravery, determination and callousness, will in the end undoubtedly make good, ' and in so doing will find himself and' discover in the process a self hitherto little known or suspected, and one that is well worth the finding." .