Carson City daily appeal. [volume] (Carson City, Nev.) 1907-1930, 1915-05-05

Press staff correspondent. Copy
right, 1915, by the United Press.
Copyright in Great Britain.l
Headquarters of the British Army
in Northern France, April 19, by mail
to New York.-This is not Tommy
Atkins; its John Bull.
The minute you begin to ruto elbows
with the English army you make this
discovery.
Tommy Atkins, the professional
English soldier, is here in plenty. He
dotes on the English army. John
Bull is the everyday English citizen
and he seems to be around here in
hundreds of thousands. Tommy At
kins is the soldier that Kipling sings
about. John Bull has never Deer sung
about. He's the John Bull who be-
%lieves his home is his castle; in fact,
it is that belief that has brought him
here. He's the John Bull who pays
his taxes, who reads newspapers and
talks politics, who has a garden, a
wife and children, and who commutes
daily, in peace times, between his
home and his office.
Take any one of your younger
neighbors-a lawyer, a street car
conductor. a real estate man. a clerk;
you fellows who stay at home IN
summer evenings and squirt the lawn
or weed the garden-and I'll go ont
on the streets Of this headquarters
town and find his counterpart for you
within five minutes. He's carrying a
gun and wearing khaki. Or I'll find
cross in one of the ED cemeteries,
his part of the job that he came out
here t do we'll and nobly finished.
1t was his duty to show that he be-
llieved o only that an Englishman's
home is his castle but that a Bel
CLANS home and a Frenchman's home
and every home in all civilization is
a sacred shelter that must be UNI
touched by enemies.
There's a thrill about being with
. the English army that no American
! can miss. These hundreds upon hum
dreds OF thousands of men are vol
unteers, every man jack of them sat
down and thought it all out for him,
self before he went to the recruiting
office and asked for a place in the
larmy. Today, in the English army
a khaki, he's his own mans men. He's
, Irresponsible to his superiors, for he
+ a soldier, but, PRIMARILY, he is re-
sponsible to himself and to that cas-
tie of his back home and to every
|Jeopardized castls-home in every cor
ner of the earth. He's worked out a
duty for himself as one works out
his own religion or the other great
problems of this life, and the answer
? to his problem is that here he is III
Khaki, a full ledged soldier.
;, Don't believe these stories that he's
always singing "Tipperary," and that
he's always ready for a frolic or z
fight. There's no frolic about it and
very little music. His frolic and mis-
music are awaiting him at his castle
somewhere in the empire, if he ever
sees it again. He came out here TO
fight and he's in dead earnest and
serious earnest. He wasn't always
singing "Tipperary" while he was
doing his duty in peace times or while
he was committing to and from work;
no more does he do it now. This is
a serious job just like his peace time
duty; the frolic and the music may
come after the job is done.
The thrill that the American gets,
rubbing elbows with this volunteer
British army comes with the knowl-
edge that there are only two great
powers in the world that have the
voluntary military system, Great
Britain and the United States.
Through all the long winter, back
in the British Isles, | saw men in silk
hats. in derbies, in long coats, in short
coats, in hunting coats, in street
clothes, drilling and marching and
countermarching, their faces were al
ways set determinedly. Now | see the
same men here, in khaki and caps.
They are here because they are fore
ed to be here; forced by something
within themselves. They are here
not only because they wanted to be
here, but because they were determin-
ed to be here.
That's the British army of today,
at the front.
| saw part of the army at church
this morning. The parson knew his
hearers.
He talked to them just as he would
have talked back in any little Old
stone church in any corner of the
British Isles on any Sunday morn
ing. He didn't mention war, MOI the
II I+ry 7 1o,rL col