THE ANZACS' MARCH.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 11729, 20 June 1916, Page 4

THE ANZACS' MARCH.

MUf OF A GREAT ADVENTURE. Mr Harold Ashton, writing in the London ''Daily Mail" of tho Anzacs' march to Westminster Abbey, says: — Tho scene was unforgettable. Tho Anzacs—there were about 2000 of them —flaunted no advertisement of tho panoply of war. They were just themselves; and that was enough. They wero business-like, grim, and silent. Forming up quickly in fours outside Waterloo Station, and headed by two or three mounted policemen, whose trained horses very politely (as they always do) pressed a clear way through the crowd, the heroes of Lone Pino and Shrapnel Gully set upon their 'journey to a burst of sudden choering, whicli died down to a> murmur as they passed tho bridge and turned into tho Strand. Tho crowds who received them here wero far too curious, too utterly absorbed, to make any clamour of welcome. Wonderingly, they drank in the picturo as it passed. Hero among them in tho searching sunlight wero tho men who had come out of something greater than victory, and who carried still the indelible racrks of their undying heroism. They bore no arms: they flaunted no banners. They marched with a sort of tip-toe tread, warily and catlike, with an elastic readiness which suggested that something significant awaited them at the turn of the next street. GRIM' AND- SCARiIED HEROES. They were tall, lean, and fine-drawn to such a pitch that some of them looked more like spectres than men—but spectres with a certain splendour in the grim gauntness of them whicli moved tho crowd strangely. . Every lineament told the tale of tremendous endeavour on thoso scarred, scorched faces—the tale of great adventure gloriously achieved. Unencumbered by arms or pack, they marched easily and swiftly. Finer soldiers, men more resolute in their bearing have surely never been seen. First camo the Australians with the gay cock's feather riding over the picturesquo slouch of their soft khaki hats. The leading ranks struck a good average of 6ft, and every soul among them bore the ennobling stamp of splendid endeavour —the '' red badge of Courage." GARLANDS FROM THE GIRLS. Their stout drummer—he was about the only plump man in the whole draft —swung his sticky with a greati flourish, tho Anzac band of dinted, but well-polished,, brass burst into an unfamiliar blare of over-seas music as they pnissed the West Australia Offices, where a welcoming banner spanned the Strand; and from the tops of anchored omnibuses pretty girls waved their handkerchiefs and flung down garlands and nosegays of flowers. There was something Roman in this scene—the more so, perhaps, because the men themselves with their eagle faces and their flashing eyes hr.d much of the centurion in the manner and the gait of them. Ciesar would have been proud, to lead such splendid warriors, and one could easily imagine lictors clearing the way to Westminster in place of our belted and high-booted horsemen of the Metropolitan Police. And "Ave, Caesar!" might have been tho crv of the crowds. "COO-EE-EE" ANT> "KEE-ORA." 1 In the middle of the Strand somebody started that haunting call of the bush—the "Coo-ee-ee"—high up upon a sunsplashed balcony. , It was caught up from lip to lip—" Coo-ee .... Coo-ee . • Coo-eeee!" and so carried along the line all the way to Trafalgar Square, where a huge crowd swayed, singing a great chant of welcome to the marching men, whose grimness as the glow of London's heartiness enfolded them vaeiished magically. " As they passed under th 9 shadow of Nelson's towering monument they wero smiling and laughing, catching tho posies'flung to them by tho girls, and replying '•'Coo-ee" for "Coo-ee." They were human, these gaunt and magnificent spectres, after all! The New Zealanders, tough and tremendous giants to a man, survivors of that splendid charge up the Gatm Tepe heights, looked more rugged and stout* than the Australians. VThey seemed as though they could go through anything and come out on the other side with that same strange, almost uncanny smile with which they met the summer storm of London's welcome yesterday. A brown-cheeked maid perched _ on the top of a.stranded omnibus surprised them mightily with the eerie cry of their native laud. " Kee-ora—Kee-ora!" she piped, most musically; and she too threw flowers upon the heads of tho smiling giants. And thus, with such a welcome 1 — straight from the hearts of the great capital of the Mother Country, the heroes of Anzac all too soon ended their'march, to enter with bowed heads tho thronged and hushed Abbey, to join their King and Queen in equal humility.