16 PAGES YEAR 86, NO. 128 | The B Pitish SATURDAY. MAY 31, 1919 big SECOND SECTION Copyright, 1919. by the MeClure News« paper Syndicate Every month, since Nov. 11th, 1918, when the armistice was signed after the enemy's abject surrender, large bodies of men have heen given , their 'release from military service, and have left the zone of the armies to be re-absorbed into civil life. The whole future of the world depends upon the thoughts, words and actions of these men and the philosophy with 'which they regard the life ahead of them. Because, although they have taken off their khaki and have been made free of discipline, and, in their civil ¢lothes, have the appearance of Pre-war citizens, they are men of a different mentality from those who have never been cloge to war and whose souls have not been scorched by sthe fires of war. They can put their old tunics inte fhe dust bing, but théy cannot put away from them- selves the memories of the tragedy they have seen, nor of the sufferings through which they passed. They are changed men; they are otherwise than as they went out to wir, with simple boyish idoals of courage and adventure; they look at lite now with the brooding eyes of men who have no Hlasions, having stared at close range Into the hell which humanity makes of lfe by hatred. Simple souls who still look at war through a haze of romanticism, and think only of the valor of our youth without 're- membering the inevitable brutalities of modern warfare, have an idea that all our fighting men have been refin- ed by those furnace fires and have come back with beautiful ideals, no- ble sentiments, and splendid' satistao- tion 'with victory, like knights after a crusade for Christian rights. The Truth About Their Spirit. The truth is, as far as I can see it, that many of our 'men are coming back with a bitter and sullen spirit, a rankling sense of injustice, and ha- tred against the Powers (whoever they may be--and they do not know) who permitted this thing, this horror, to happen in the world Many of them are coming back, if I know any- thing about them, with violent pas sions which they are prepared to nse violently, if thwarted in their desires, or if crossed in temper. i That dtate of mind seems io me to he Inevitable. Look at the life those men led in the trencheg-especially the British 18 who Kad so long oo All their training and first mental and emotional shock that tame to them, because these boys of ours belonged to a phase of civiliza- tion In which the killing of men seemed to have been eliminated. They had been taught, all through their boyhood up to the point of war, that bloodshed' was to be avoided at all utp that the civil law was a remedy for all quarrels, however passionate, and that the code of life was gentle, courteous and kind. Now suddenly all that wag reversed by the necessity of killing Germans by Any means, in large' numbers, at ey- ery hour of the day and night. Their bayonet drill was devised sclentifi- cally to inflame their blood lust. I have seen boys so influenced that afl- ter they had stabbed the sandbags fe- rociously, they kicked them as though they were the bodies of their enemy. Officers told them impressively that after they had once been really "blooded," that is to say, when they uad really killed their man, they would like it, and want to £0 on kill- ing. "Where's *Arry?" asked a cockney sergeant whose platoon was bayonet- Ing Germans In a trengh fight. 'Arry was a c rder-heartd fellow, rather a "softy." arc the gergeant called for him to do = ste bit of killing so that he should be properly hardened and get the bldod lust. = It was part of the training---necossary in war, which has only one purpose, and that the slaughter of the enemy War's Influence (onthe Men Who Come By Philip Gibbs Primitive man; and found themselves at home, liking it. -- . Strange Pleasure in Cruelty, There was an English lawyer in Flanders, In 1916, whose pleasure it Was to creep out at night into No Man's Lang close to the German line, and pretending to be a dead body, wait for any enemy to show himself. Sometimes 4 man would crawl out to drag in.a dead comrade and then the English lawyer--a highly intellectual and educated gentleman would raise himself an inch or two with his rifle, and lay out the living man be- side the dead one. Sometfmes a small party of Germans would creep out a little way to mend heir wire, and the lawyer would get two or three shots, and every shot meant a dead man, whose number he nicked off by a notch in the butt-end of his ribe. By day this officer w al lent, moody, restless. He lived for the nights, when he could hunt alone. He was back in the primitive agé of lifo---three thousand years back from 1915. There were other men like him, with a real pleasure in the killing side of the business. "How did you get on to-day?' I asked a soldier from Northumberland, during a big battle. "It was a disappointment," he said, quite simple, with a north- ern burr in his speech. "The Ger- mans ran so far I 'couldn't get in with the bayonet work." There were Australian battalions So every day boys who had come out of nurseries and "academies for young gentlemen," and elementary schools regulated by a gentle code, | were taught how to kill the enemy by patient watching for any head to' show albove a sandbag parapet, by; machine-gunning a group of men vis- thle through a periscope, by bomb- ing him or knifios him in the dark- | ness of No Man's Land, by strangling him th underground tunnels, by blow- ing him up at the touch of a mine charge, by soaking h nolson gas, and by smashing him to death with gun fire, precisely as he tried to do to us. Our young lads | learned these lessons quickly, though ! to many of them it was all unnatural and abhorrent, and 'it made a differ- ence to their view of life. Some of them lapsed easily into the new or- der of things. which was also the ofd order of mankind in the days of the Stone Age and the ape-like man. All that civilization meant: as i to one end--- Jelena 1 out of thelr 'souls who had a special force of trench ralders trained by an old Hon-hearted colonel like a sixteenth century sol- dier of fortune, with steel-blue eyes under shaggy brows, and a ferocious scowl, which dissolved into a curious- ly sweet smile after he had gripped one's hand as in an iron vise. "Come and eat with my young whelps," he said, and I sat down in the officers' mess of the raiding bat- talion. All the men there had vol- | unteerea for this raiding job--the most certain death after lucky escape this time or next. They told me their method of attack, their way of killing in a hurry, Most of them preferred a- short steel blade like a dagger for dealing with the sentries and any men walking in the trenches though others like a short, iron-weighted club, For slaughter of a wholesale kind there was noth- ing like a Stokes shell with a quick ung down These raid- . to y : 8 ¥ me that way. not "Yes, but I am getting tired of trying 16 encourage so, but when will T ever get 1 ers were simple, grim, . humorous young men. . "I feed 'em raw meat," sald their old colonel with a wink. "It makes them more savage." That, of course, was his jest. They. were not An need of raw meat to inflame the quiet pleasure they had in killing their en- emy. The Scots, - the North Country English, and the Canadians were not averse to the business of slaughter, and in the heart of battle they "saw red." as most men do,' partly from fear, which is an element of all fe- rocity in fighting--the fear of cer- tain death if the enemy is not de- stroyed----and partly from primitive passions which surge up in the hu- man heart with a revival of the cave- man instinct face to face with the hostile tribe. The Londoners and South Country English, and many of the men from cities like Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham and so on, had an nstinetive revolt against bayonet ghting and bombing at close range---they were slow when the enemy surrendered, and did not work for death--and having been bred in towns, with their civilizing and perhaps enervating influences, hated all the conditions of war more poignantly, with more spirited dis- tress, than lads Jom rural districts, For that reason their courage as sol- diers--and no bodies of men were more gallant than the London divi- sions--was most to he ulmhed. ---- They Cannot Be the Same, Now, nien who have gone through experiences like that, who have not only ween trained to kill, but have known that their own life was of no more account than a grain of sand, who have been so familar with the sight 'of death that it 'has no effect th Tepe i a dugout in whioh]ooh jt Nas he harked back to the Satur stain ot Sem mans were hiding. upon their conditions, are not likely to come back to evil life 4s they went away from ft. They have been hardened, and to some extent brutalized. Or If they have been sensitive enough and intelligent en- ough to avoid a brutalizing process, they have come back---some of them ~--with a passionate sense of revolt against the things they had to do as 800d soldiers, the discipline that was exacted of 'thom, so that théy had no individual liberty of conscience, desire 'or action, and. against the so- elal philosophy of the jgnodern world Which: took. such for granted ! Hose. things by the of | , Shoe, Shinn or at least mill of soldiers, remember some private, personal grievance which embittered them; the constant brutality of '{ officer, or thi decoration for some service--it was often another fellow who got the re- ward---or, worse still, some blunder- ing order or careless leadership which led to' the sacrifice of a com- bany or battalion. They are resent- ful of the losses suffered by their -| comrades, and, Justly or unjustly--. ih many Cases' unjustly---they accuse their superior officers, or the High Command, ofl ruthless disregard of human life. They are resentful, also, more bitterly, of the people at home who did not suffer the things they suffered, and who grew rich or kept their wealth, and 'their domes- tic happiness, and their little. com- forts and luxuries, while the fight- Ing men were. lying in wet ditches and being shelled to pleces. who came back 'to England on' seven days' leave from France and Flan- ders strolled up Piccadilly and saw a tidé of motor-cars driving 'by with well-dressed . people laughing and chatting insid them, and looked titough the Wi te! : and saw pretty women In evens ng dress flirting with men in "boiled Saw queues outside the and music: halls and sald; : doesn't care & damn for ns. We may die to the last man and they will still 'amuse; themselves. e are sacrificed for the selfish- hess of those rich, idle, swine. if we get our legs blown off, they will le us out a few pounds and then forget us, ed bodies about the streets J Rive heard men ey 'were not pleasant to hear. In the main, they were utterly un- true, because the women-of England & for thei say those things, & things up in their bred a secret venom. -- Their Discipline was Wonderful. They were amenable to discipline In a wonderful way, because they saw with natural common sense that without discipline an army isa rab- ble, and because, if they did not obey; the price of disobedience was , dreadful. But military discipline is not natural to men. It 1s utterly unnatural, and against the instinet (Continued on Page 13.) ---- » . > Childhood Constipation Constipated . children can find prompt relief through the use of Baby's Own Tablets, The tablets are mild but thorough laxative which never fail to regulate the bowels and stomach, thus driving out constipa- tion and indigestion; colds and sim- , Dle fevers, Concerning them . Mrs. Gaspard Daigle, Demain, Que., writes: "Baby's Own Tablets have been of great benefit to my little boy, who was suffering from constipation and indigestion. Thay quickly re- Heved him and now he is in the best of health." The Tablets are sold by medicine dealers or by mail at 25 cts. a box from The Dr. Williams' Medieine Co., Brockville, Ont. ---- minds and they Because of the scarcity of do- mestic coal only about one-tenth of the vast amount of fron ore mined In Spain is utilized at home. 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