ergeants
forsook their families and businesses at the very outset of the War,
without a moment's hesitation, is a signal proof of their character. No
men were ever greater lovers of peace. Some philosophers have seen or
tried to see in the War a judgment on the luxury and frivolity of
pre-War England, on her neglect of defence, and her absorption in
opulence. Were this the case, it would be ironical to reflect how the
North Country homes, first and most cruelly scourged by the War, were
homes to which the so-called "sins of society" were least known and most
repugnant, and where military training had been long pursued in the
teeth of public ridicule and at the sacrifice of leisure. Long
afterwards the father of a very talented private (Arthur Powell), who
was killed in Turkey, wrote of his son: "We never intended him for the
rude alarums of war, but his sense of duty and the horrors of Belgium
fired his imagination, so that with hundreds of thousands of
high-spirited young Englishmen, he placed himself in his country's
service." This cast of thought is uncommon in the ranks of a Regular
army.

Officers and N.C.O.'s were obviously and admittedly amateurs, and never
acquired the distinctive dash of the old Army. Soldiering was not their
profession. Yet Territorials like the Manchesters possessed a range of
talent in many ways beyond the normal standard of the Army. They had the
manual arts and crafts of the industrial North. These volunteers were in
civil life builders and joiners; railwaymen, tramwaymen, engineers;
clerks, shorthand-writers, draughtsmen, warehousemen, packers; carters
and fitters; telephonists, chemists. When half of C Company was suddenly
converted into the British Camel Corps at Khartum it was discovered to
contain the camel-keeper of Bostock's menagerie. We found piano-tuners
for the Sirdar's Palace, gardeners for the Barrack plantations, and in
later days expert mechanics for anti-aircraft gunnery. Skilled clerks
like Sergeants J.C. Jones and Beaumont were marked out by Nature for the
orderly room. Many men well qualified to hold commissions served in the
ranks and died before the nation recognised their quality. Lastly, we
could turn out more barristers than all the other East Lancashire units
put together. It would be hard to imagine better officers than our
three ex-Juniors of the Northern Circuit--N. H.P. Whitley, J.H. Thorpe
and Hans Hamilton.

With the New Army, that was destined to do so muc