OCR Text |
Show en writes or WAR FROM ENGLISH STANDPOINT A letter, giving an idea c4 the manner man-ner in which the English people are standing behind the government and telling of interesting war incidents of recent date, was received yesterday yester-day by Alfred Rutherglon chief clerk to G. O. Brophy of the Union Paclf-( Paclf-( 'r from his brother C R Rutherglen. I an engineer of London, England A portion of the letter follows: "Well, It appears we are living 11! ! history again aud pretty warm, too. Our government, I think, seems to have smolled the fat In the fire for some time but any little preparations the navy was making scorns to have been overshadowed by the home rule question for the man In the street Lord Kitchener's organ! 7-at.lon has been a wonder He certainly got a free hand and tackled the proposition proposi-tion like an engineer. Sent the territorials ter-ritorials out to commandeer motor busses horses, vans, trolleys, stores out of large warehouses, gave instructions in-structions that there were to be no cornering of food stuffB, and stuck up bills asking for 600,000 recruits. 5 feet 6 inches in height, or over, and not less than thirty-five Inches chest, and to be sound in wlud and limb. He expected this to be raised In six months, but in six weeks they had recruited 520,000. The towns all over the country seem full of them now, and they are put through It for eight hours per day getting Swedish drill, military drill, etc. The food they get too is the best and plenty of It It Is wonderful to see how the drilling has brought them dp and filled them out You meet young fellows who used to be clerks, or something in a store, leaving their homes to go off to drill in the morning, morn-ing, swinging along heel and toe. five miles per hour and looklne as if thev were taken out of the first eleven of a first class football team Their spirits, too, seem to be wonderful These new recruits have got very fe.v uniforms issued out to them as yet, but the ones around here seem to have some idea of sameness and near ly all dress as follows "Pair strong army boots, dark trousers, trou-sers, grey sporting Jacket and large crowned motor cap They get about one shilling per day, and the ones who are billeted with their own peo-p'e peo-p'e get about two shillings per day towards food and board, so altogether they do not do so bad. They are beginning to be nicknamed 'Kitchen er's Rag Time Army,' for whenever they get a chance they break into rag time ditties. The spirit of the army and navy is splendid In spite of the stiff job before them "One of our men, who was a naval reservist, and who was on one of the boats that was torpedoed by the German submarine, called up at tbe office last week. His boat, 12.000 tons, snnk in four minutes Hp was on deck, he said and Just had time to go below and get five pounds he had in his bunk and when he got up again the boat was gradually turning turn-ing turtle The captain gave them orders to strip their clothes off and swim for another ship when their boat sank. This man 6aid that before be-fore their ship finally sank he found himself sitting on the keel, with a crowd of others singing 'We All Go the Same Way Home,' a popular song Another rowd was singing 'It's a Long, Long Way to Tlpperary.' and some others the hymn 'Nearer, My God to Thee' Well 1200 men were lost and about 800 saved. It was a nasty little smack, all through being be-ing a little bit too venturesome. "Of the land fighting, what has been done has been wonderful and awful, the amount of killed and wounded I don't think we will know for a long time yet The Germans have an enormous army, but I expect ex-pect their be6t men are beginning to get thinned out by now. Poor Belgium Bel-gium seems to be pretty well laid waste to and the poor people seem to be in a fearful state. Their priests have done some noble work, going out under fire, assisting the wounded and giving the dying their last few words of comfort I suppose you have rend about the British assisting the Belgians Belgi-ans to stop the enemy from violating the neutrality of Belgium at Mons and Namur and how they were outnumbered out-numbered and had to fight the most wonderful rear guard actions ever heard of almost all the way to Paris, where they were reinforced and turned turn-ed on the enemy and made them retreat re-treat from the valley of the river Marne to the river Alsne, where they have fought facing each other for 24 da s now Some of our men were in trenches with water up to their waists, sometimes for five days. The wet weather seemed to play the enemy out. for their big siege guns, which took thirty horses to pull, got stuck in the mud and sometimes had to be spiked and left. What the ultimate ul-timate result of this battle will be, you will probably know before you get this letter. I feel like the rest of the people here that there can only be one result, but that i6 only to be obtained by dogged right down hard work. "The German army is the largest and best organized ever put to field maneuvers, but with some defects when put against an actual enemy. "I would have written you weeks ago about it, but the reliable papers give such little news, Just about a paragraph a week. Nothing which is not official and passed by the government gov-ernment press bureau, is to be relied re-lied on. However, what we have got so far is satisfactory on the whole and it is sincerely hoped to be so for the future." |