The Men Who Are Making the Advance.

Waipawa Mail, Volume XXXVI, Issue 7752, 22 July 1916, Page 4 (Supplement)

The Men Who Are Making the Advance.

The Stuff of the New Armies.==By W. Douglas Newton.

Now that a measure of complete compulsion has been passed, it is well to reiucmlMM' that the British Army is still a voluntary one. Whatever the result of tlio war, wo on our part know wo will have fought it n our old and historic* way. There can bo no doubt of this. Compulsion has brought in the stragglers, hut it was w illing patriotism tha gathered the hosts. The men who are hound to bo soldiers by law are to I d numbered in hundreds of thousands, but what is that to the willing, for they must bo numbered by million?? The groat army of Great Britain had already Iwen raised before Military Service Acts came in. And it is that great army which is to win the .war—an army of volunteers. THE WAR TO BE WON BY VOLUNTEERS. The men who went into the army feu the old, the noble reason of patriotisn are the men who are going to die tc, give us vi tory. If they had not gone wo should have lost by now. If they had not gone wo would bo losng in ‘.lie coming offensive. It is tlio volunteer army, ready and trained, that is to face the crucial moment of the war. The conscripts can only Fofoo in after, come in useful undoubtedly, but only after the gyeat army of the willing has done its work. And though, perhaps, it is a sentimental oonsidertion, we can rejoice in that fact. The traditions of our land have been preserved to us in this way ami by these men. A race of free citizens; a race not greatly concerned or attracted by soldiering, a Napoleon called it —of shopkeepers, is again, w ith the power and tlu* honour of its arms, proving its right to stand equal with the greatest soldier races of the .world. CIVILIANS RATHER THAN SOLDIERS. fn the first number of “T.P.’s Journal" that acute and erudite military authority, Dr. Miller Maguire, pointed I out how our armies had not merely i made Great Britain, hut had made Europe as it stands to-day. 1 think he I will permit mo to say that the armies ho talked of were uot armies at all in the Continental fvuis? and certainly not armies in the modern sens/) of the term. 'I hat is, the men who composed them were not soldiers as too Continent — especially the Continent of our time —-considers men soldiers. They had undertaken no special form of military train, ing at any time of their life, hut were, civilians w ho had lett very ordinary and very placid conditions to go to war . li the defence of what they considered light: As Cincinnntus was a ploughmini rather than a dictator of the Roman Repul hie, so the British aro civilians rather than soldiers; hut ns with Cincinnatus, the British have shown themselves to be unmistakably eapahl? when once they have taken io war. AS IN 1 HE PAST. An it lias been jn the past, so it <r now. The nation of civilians once more stood to arms, and it is proving the excellence of the old light ng spirit in the* old fighting way. To-day the splendidly efficient and heroic little army of .Mens lias all hut vanished, and in it' place me arrayed me men of the Ne*v Army, the m.c*n who had no particular de.Nin* to fight the butchers, the baiters, the clerks and candlestick makers, tlio crofters, tlu* polughmcn, the factory hands and tlv? professionals, and men of all grades and types. Like their fathers of Agincourt, of tlio Low Co untrio.. and the Peninsula, they have taken arms in hand to go out to brave war for brave and olden ideals. FROM THE WARP AND WOOF OF ORDINARY LIFE. Esj: ciall.v now s uer tlu* autumn days of last yiar, in fact are the young men who followed a thousand trades, hut never that of a soldier, facing the mac-hine-rtiml? soldiery of Prussia, an I showing tlu* excellence of tliejr qua.iiii .. Ail tlu* sharp battles that strike at ii-. out of the turmoil of war, Loos, St. Kloi, tlu* Vpres scraps, as well as th.lighting in Egypt, about Salonika, and that, a short time ago, in Gallipoli, have been fought by men who, two \ <>i i-,. nj o, ncv( l* I bought of thenisdv.es in connection with war. Men of the ordinary wv-’i'P and woof of our every-day nlc, farmers and farm hands, miners, warehouse-men, c lerks, artists and act or.j, ( veil, ar.o in our first line. Shopmen, newspaper boys, poets, and civil servants are w inning the V:C.; an actor of Sir !•’. R . Benson’s company lias won tlu* D.S.M.; lawyers and doctors, accountants, miners, and mill hands are gaining honourable m/cdals. Territorials i or regular battalions of the New Army, whatever ono calls them, they are no other than citizens called away from tlu. plough and the d/*sk to the fields el Will 4 . SAXON AND CELT ALL SERVE. All ■ lasses and conditions of our manhood. and all our races, too, are otr. thorn ju tlio firing line. The skirl of the fynttish rrgpipos s heard on the Flemish marshland?, :-;id th-.. ;* 11 i d'landei and F.ow--11 id r; w itli every disjleet over the hi one lino of trenches tlio O, rirnii soldh-rs U tc n to part songs s'iiig i • such trained luirmnnv that th y sound as if a battalion of operain 1 1 n.? into the firing lino Tlio We!‘l lu?. sneak their own language. For a tim • no riffic • • i coivcd bis command mile: In* spoke

it as fluently os running water by Aberystwyth, and even orders were given in this tongue until a few’ Saxons, discovered in the ranks, failed to form fours and know their left hand from their right in Welsh. Mr. Philip Gibbs, the brilliant correspondent of the “Daily Chronicle,” writes that, and writes many times of this wonderful picture of all our youth out at wuir. I heard an Australian on.e day imitate the laughing jackass in the darkness of a Flemish night with a weird and wonderful effect. The French Canadians do not need to learn the language of the peasants in these market towns. Soldiers from Somerset use many old Saxon words which puzzle their Cockney friends, and the Lancashire men have brought the Northern burr with them and the girt of the Northern spirit. And Ireland has sent the bravest of her boys out here. THERE IS A CITY CALLED LONDON. The men whose real lfe is of fields and factories, the pioneer men from oveiseas, aro in that picture; but the men of the cities, apd especially the capita! of cities, London, are to bo scon at war also. Well, there is a city called London which breeds some good men too It is “no mean city” which sent out the 47th Division of Territorials irom the Civil Service and the Post Office, from City offices, warehouses, playhouses. and all professions and businesses of the great old place. There i*> no sign of decadent civilisation about those young men, and ono is astonished that the wear and tear of City life and the atmosphere of its offices have left no trace in physique and physiognomy. . Certain ly not in physique, though perhaps one can tell them as London men by features a little more keenly cut than those of provincial battalions. SHROPSHIRE LADS, AND STURDY SOLDIERS. The old fighting physique, tlio oki hard bodies that carried our fathers ! through their wars, are to be seen in Jill, clerks or countrymen. Hero is Mr. Gibbs’s impression of the Shropshire men, th.o King’s Shropshire Light In fantry, who fought and won back a line of trenches from the Germans at the end of April. Shropshire lads, country born ami country bred, who have followed tlio plough down the bg brown furrows of our English soil, have fought, on many fields of Europe before the war. The old stoc k has not weakened. The old stock has not weakened, nothe old manner of going to war changed. Tito men have left tlio plougn as their fathers did to follow Welling- ( ton. Like their fathers, they may notI*,? soldiers a.s tlu*. military nations deem men soldiccrs; but for all that they are lit to meet any in the world. HOW DO THEY FIGHT? LISTEN. And how do tlie.se young men win knew not war as preached by the apostate of Prussia hold themselves in war? Well, tlio Prussian drill sergeant must be surprised at them. The only way the Prussian can tell them (aa fighters) from his own manufactured article is that they are better; better, moro tenacious, and more terrible .u action. They have tangld the enemy this grim lesson, not merely in France and Flanders, but on every field of fighting—Egypt, Africa, Salonika, Gallipoli, and Mesopotamia. The men of the New Army have proved themselves jeers in tlio ordinary, extraordina.. \ braveiy of tin* war. IL was, for in stance, men of the citizen force, men of tint London Irish, who dribbled a football right into tlu* trenches of Loo:-, and who helped win the place with their dash. It was a moil of the New Army, a private in the Gordons, who, in that Big Push, advanced at. a walkright up to the German lines playing a mouth organ at a walk, with tlr* shells bursting all around him. It wn.i men of the New Army, the Connaughts, Ministers, and Dublin.?, who saved the day when the Allies were retiring down tlio V'ardar Valiev to the Greek frontier. They were callow troll lads that had not known drilling, or shooting, or war before this war, but they remained firm, allowed thcmselv.es to lie cub to pieces (while they gave as good as they took), and saved the situation when th? French flank had been driven 111. CLIMBING INTO 11KLL ON AN AEROPLANE.” Tho young men who were civilians first and soldiers only when their conn, try called have shown splendidly throughout tlio Wan*. Tlio Irish regiments named above, with the I.einsters, had already earned their laurels in Gallipoli. At Suvla, they landed with .shells bursting about the lighters, and land mines blazing oft' as they set foot- on he beaches. Undismayed, their coolness und'stiM'bed, they formed for attack as f on th? parade ground. Going to tlTe attack, their dcnieanoui | was notable in tlu* fare of manifold to* - - rors. An Anzac officer saw them in lb? r.v.-nult. J f? cannot praise there, enough. Their landing qt Suvla Bay was the great; af. thing you w : ll ever read of in books bv highbrows Those that wit nr vwd the advance will never forget it. Bullets and shrapnel rained on them, yet tli?'v iicv/m* wavered. The J wav thev took lit at bill (now called j Dublin Hill) the kind of tiling ‘ that would make you pinch yourself

to prove that it was not a cheap wine aftermath. How they got there Heaven only knows. As the land lay, cPmhing into hell on an aeroplane seemed an easietr proposition than taking that hill. ‘•THEY CHARGED INTO THE FOREST.” OalKpoli saw the magnificent fighting and death of that wonderful battalion of workers firom the King’s estates. At Suvla, tho sth (Territorial) Battalion Norfolk Regiment performed that deed which will for all time remain one of tho finest as well as the most tragic memories of the War. Sir lan Hamilton sot down theiy exploit in gravely dramatic language. The battalion had rushed a hill to dislodge the Turks from some woods. • Among these ardent souls was part of a fine company enlisted from the King’s Sandringham estates. Nothing moro was .over seen or heard of any of them. They charged into the forest and were lost to sight or sound. They were men from field l work on tho Sandringham estates, men from civil occupations at Yarmouth and Lynn, and the broad, fiat level of Norfolk. But they charged up hill into certain death, and nearly all of those men who had no real inclination towards soldiery died a glorious soldier s dettth. “It was just a jumbled-up affair,” writes Corporal Blott, one of the survivors, who after the fight was mat ched ninety miles in four days to his internment camp. “ The bills were alive with irfles and machine-guns,” writes a survivor. “Still, on we went, rushing forward Men shouted, ‘Good old Yarmouth! Good old Sandringham! Good old DoiYnham! and Good old Lynn!’ As they fell on the enemy, N.C.O’s were shouting to cheer the men up; but there was not any need for that for they fought like devils let loose!” BRAVERY UNPARALLELED. Londoners or countrymen, clerks or manual workers, labourers or miners, they have taken in hand tho sword, and they fight a.s men of the ra.eo have ever used the sword: bravely, cleanly, ably. Here are the Dorset Yeomen, fellows’ used to a slock country, grassy hills and vales, and equable climate, and 1 a sloW and homely mode of life; hut thev aro out on the sun-blistering expanse < 1 West Egypt, over against the Tripod border, charging the savage Senussi. The Dorsets, well opened out, swept across the open towards Gaafer Pasha and his machine-guns. Concentrated fire wv? immediately brought to bear on The advancing troops, and Gaafer waited calmly to see them OUR OLD STAMP, OUR OLD FIBRU, OUR OLD VALOUR. As fino as any soldiers of the world, as fine as their fathers before tliegi. And as theif fathers } these men of on” New Army are ireo men, are willing men too. They are not (Warriors oy choice, they are kindly fellows, simple, industrious, ordinary, and every-day—-but men of our old stamp, our old fibre, any in their devotion and splendour j*i arms. —-fn “T.P.’s Journal of Great Deeds.”