THE PERSONAL PROBLEM.

Waipawa Mail, Volume XXXVI, Issue 7752, 22 July 1916, Page 2 (Supplement)

THE PERSONAL PROBLEM.

WAR AND THE MAN. London “D.aily Mail.’’, One wonders at times what will be the result of this war on the characters of the men who have gone through It. Many prognostications have been made, and are being made daily, by people—some of whom are qualified to judge and some of whom are not — on the general changes ir social and economic conditions that will occur when the war is over. But what of the far more interesting and human study—the change in the men themselves? For no man can go through the madness and come out the same. Some are affected more than others, as is only natural; some were professional soldiers before, and to them the game, though infinitely more terrible than their previous experiences, was not exactly new. But what of all the others—the lawyers, the stockbrokers, the clerks, all of them taken suddenly from the placid, everyday, sedentary life and pitchforked into the Great Adventure? Will it make them hard, will it make them callous—above all, will they ever be able to settle down again? Back to the old, dull routine, the same old train in the morning, the same deadly office, the same train back home again. I know not —but a few days ago I witnessed a small incident which gave me to think. And in addition to that it suddenly, and in a way that I can hardly hope to express on paper, showed me the contrast —the life in England, the normal, ordinary life as against the life in France. One has read so much—one has understood so little. A description, however vivid and graphic, o things one has no conception of except by hearsay must of necessity be an unsatisfactory affair. * # * * It was Vane the stockbroker who supplied the incident, though as far as 1 know he is quite unconscious of having done so. Passing his house one evening last week I suddenly hoard a hail. “Come in and have a gargle. I’ve just got hack on short leave.” “Good,” I answered. “Mrs. Vane must be pleased.” We strolled up the drive and in through the door. “You’re looking very fit, old man. Flanders seems to suit you.” “My dear fellow, it does. It’s the goods. I never knew what living was before. The thought of that cursed office makes me tired—and—and once” —he shrugged his shoulders—“it filled my life. Say when.” “Cheer oh!” We clinked glasses. “T thought you were taking a commission.” “ I ain-7-very shortly. The colonel has recommended me for one, and 1 gather the powers that be approve. But in a way I’m sorry, you know. I’ve got a great pal In my section—who kept a whelk stall down in Whitechapel. I assure you, my dear chap, that fellow spins a yarn better than any society raconteur I’ve ever met. Garnished a little, a trifle fullbodied and spicy—but still, que voul-oz-vous?” He was looking reminiscently into the fire from the depths of an armchair and pulling luxuriously at his pipe. Suddenly he gave a short laugh. “To show you the type of fellow he is. About a week ago we were ■nip in the trenches—bored stiff, and yet happy in a way, you know, when Master Boche started to register—that is, to find out the exact range of our bit of Mother Earth by dropping shells there. 1 suppose it was a new battery or something, but they were using crumps, not shrapnel; 1 mean, it was a howitzer firing stuff that erploded on impact, not a field gun firing shrapnel that explodes in the air. They weren’t very big, but they were very close—and they got closer. You hear a nasty droning noise then there’s the hell of an explosion—a great column of blackish yellow smoke rises, and the bits ping tl rough the. air overhead. Well, he get a breket; by that I mean the first o:.e was fifty vards short of the trench and the second was a hundred yards over. Then ho started to c.in.© kart.—always in the same line; and the line raised straight through our bit or’ the trench.

“ ' ’Ere! what yer doing, you perishers. Sargint, go and stop ’em. Tell ’em I’ve been appointed purveyor of winkles to the Royal ’Ouse of the ’Un Emperor.’ “Our friend of the whelk stall was surveying the scene with intense, disfavour. A great mass of smoke belched up ffom the ground twenty yards away and he ducked instinctively. Then we waited—fifteen seconds, about, was the interval between shots. The men were a bit white about the gills, and —well, the feeling in the pit of my tummy was what is known as wobbly. Then it came and we cowered. There was a roar like nothing on earth—the back of the trench collapsed and the whole lot of us were buried. If the shell had been five yards short it would have burst in the trench and my whelk friend would have whelked no more.”

Vane replenished his drink and laughed. “We emerged plucking mud from our mouths and cursed. The Hun apparently was satisfied and stopped. The only person who wasn’t satisfied was the purveyor of winkles to the Royal 'Ouse. He brooded through the (lay, but towards the evening he became more cheerful. “ ‘Look ’ere,’ he said to me, ‘ ’ave you ever killed a ’Un?” “ ‘I think I did once,’ I said, 'a fat man with a nasty face.’ “‘Oh, you ’ave, ’ave you? Well, what abaht killing one to-night? If they thinks I’m going to stand that sort of thing they’re wrong.’ The language was the language of Whitechapel, but the sentiments were the sentiments of even the most rabid purist of speech. “To cut a long story short, we went. We warned ’em in the trench and we scrambled over the parapet —out into the No-man’s Land. And wc were very lucky. * T looked at Vane as lie spoke, and there was a look on his face which interested me even more than li is story.

“We ran into three of ’em, creeping about half-wa y between the trachea. My fish friend spotted them first and chuckled horribly. Gad! man.” Vane’s pipe was out and he was glaring at me. “I never knew what life was till that moment. He cracked the skull of one with the butt of his rifle, and I got my bayonet into another.’ To think of it—alone in the blackness of the night: to feel the steel go in, to hear the guttural curse of fear—to know that, man to man, one had beaten

them. Life— great kj perfect, utier bliss.” J Then came th e 1 “Dear,” said a voice at J children are in bed- 1 and say good-night? * 1 For a moment th e J silence in the room J laughed shortly, a ij tt {J course, dear, m g 0 i rose and finished hi* | afraid I’ve been talkjj air, old boy.” *1 “Not a bit," 1 an J interested me enorin o J He had—but the C oJ terested me still ni o ll is geing to be the legyJ