Cricket 1914

4 4 2 THE WORLD OF CRICKET. S e p t e m b e r , 1914. £be TKfloilfc of Cricket. 61, TEMPLE CHAMBERS, TEMPLE AVENUE, EMBANKMENT, LONDON, E.C. N O T I C E . T h e n e x t i s s u e o f t h is p a p e r w ill b e dated O c t o b e r 3 , a n d w e t r u s t to c o n t i n u e th e u s u a l w i n t e r n u m b e r s . Pavilion Gossip. (By J. N. P.) England, queen of the waves whose green inviolate girdle enrings thee round, Mother fair as the morning, where is now the place of thy foemen found ? Still the sea that salutes us free proclaims them stricken, acclaims thee crowned. * * * * * Life that shines from thee shows forth signs that none may read not but eyeiess foes : Hate, born blind, in his abject mind grows hopeful now but as madness grows • Love, born wise, with exultant eyes adores thy glory, beholds and glows. Truth is in thee, and none may win thee to lie, forsaking the face of truth : Freedom lives by the grace she gives thee, born again from thy deathless youth : Faith should fail, and the world^grow pale, wert thou the prey of the serpent’s tooth. How shalt thou be abased ? or how shall fear take hold of thy heart ? of thine, England, maiden immortal, laden with charge of life and with hopes divine ? Earth shall wither, when eyes turned hither behold not light in her darkness shine. A. C. S w in b u rn e . No good Englishman—no good Briton — fears in these days, ■when the fate of the greatest nation the world has ever seen is at stake. Of the ultimate issue we are quietly confident; but those of us who are using such brains as nature has endowed them with have begun to dread that the issue may be delayed by something that was not reckoned with at the first outbreak of war. T h e n we were bidden to be on our guard against panic. All sorts of precautions—wise precautions—were taken to prevent it. And at the time of writing there seems reason to suspect that these precautions have been almost too effective. “ B e n o r m a l , ” said th e voice o f w isd o m , a n d th e voice of ■wisdom spoke w ell. B u t th e p ity of i t is t h a t fo r so m a n y m illio n s o f us n o rm a lity m e a n s in d ifferen ce to m a tte rs o u tsid e a v e ry lim ite d range. A n d for these normality implies, it would seem a conviction— if, indeed, anything as strong as a conviction can be attributed to them—that the War is not their War, that it can touch their lives but indirectly, that it may safely be left to other people. A l l wrong !. This War is every Briton’s War. There is no household through all these fair islands of ours—no drab house like all its neighbours in some drab street, no cot in a Highland glen or smoky cabin by a Connemara bog, no mansion in Park Lane, no villa in the suburbs, no pleasant dwelling"® all the green countryside—to which it does not matter. R o m e , greatest of all the nations of antiquity, fell because Rome had grown rotten. If we fall, it will be because we have grown rotten likewise. We shall fall only if we deserve to fall. And if things should come to such a pass Britain would be but a name, and those of us who cherish her ancient glory, her high traditions, could only hope for death on the last stricken field. Better that by far than life in a German-ruled England. Better a hundred deaths, if it were possible, than to live as vassals of the modern Attila, the man who sent his legions to arson and rape and murder in the fields of an unoffending nation ! B u t the thing cannot be. The sleeping millions will awake when they understand. That they do not understand yet is not wholly their own fault, it may be ; but they cannot be absolved of blame. “ Don't worry,” they were told. No one told them not to think ; yet it would seem that to many of them there was in the message they received something that they understood as absolving them from the need of thinking. A v e r y little thought is sufficient to show that the task in hand is altogether too big unless the full manhood of the nation makes itself felt. It is not enough that our splendid fleet keeps the high seas. It is not enough that our gallant sailors, true heirs of the glories of Nelson and Collingwood, Benbow and Hawke, Drake and Howard, watch the German naval strongholds like terriers at rat-holes, keeping ceaseless ward, enduring strain and stress like the heroes they are. and onlv longing that the Teutons should come out and dare the ordeal of battle. I t is not enough that we should train for home defence. The surest way to avert the necessity of flinging back a German raid on our own shores is to be able to send over our hundreds of thousands to the Continent. Every man in the fighting line there is worth five would-be defenders here. It is not only the battle of our allies that the gallant men under Sir John French are fighting, though we are all glad that they should be allied with the brave Frenchmen and the no less brave Belgians ; they are fighting Britain’s battle too, defending our hearths as surely and as effectively as if the War was being waged on the Yorkshire moors and the Lincolnshire wolds, through the fens of East Anglia, or around the mother-city. T h e War Office will not accept for service untrained men over 35. But there are enough of these to form a vast army for home defence, setting free the younger men to go abroad and serve. The guarding of these islands cannot, of course, be entrusted wholly to volunteers, however willing, who are yet far from being skilled in arms. But stern necessity teaches lessons quickly. In six months’ time some of us who have never yet shouldered a rifle may be fit to help in the task of repelling invasion, should it come ; and meanwhile regiment after regiment of younger men may be released from duties here to help in the great work going on across the narrow seas—the great work of slaying the Teuton dragon which threatens civilisation. O u r appeal is, we know, a limited one compared with that of a great daily paper. Yet at such a time as this to be silent is to be a traitor to one’s country. It may be little these words will avail ; but that can form no excuse for withholding them. A n d it is not because we believe that cricketers generally have been backward that we write this. A glance through the Gazette shows many a name known to cricket fame. The bearers o'f those names have taken up their share of the nation’s burden. Here, for instance (it is impossible to give a full list, for none such is available) are a few excerpts from the Gazette which serve to show this :— “ T h e following from Unattached List, Territorial Force (Officers Training Corps) to be Second Lieuts.—J. H. Naumann, R. B. Lagden.” “ The King’s Royal Rifle Corps.—Lieut. R. O. Lagden, from the Unattached List, Territorial Force, to be Second Lieut.” " 5th Batt. the Gloucestershire Regt.—From the Territorial Force Reserve, Capt. G. F. Collett.” “ Northumberland Hussars.—Lieut. H. M. Stobart, from the Territorial Force Reserve, to be Lieut.” " Royal Field Artillery, ist East Anglian Brigade—to be Second Lieuts.—M. Falcon, J. H. Falcon.” " The following to be Second Lieuts.—Infantry—C. L. Mackay, 5th Batt. Worcestershire Regt. ; E. C. MacBryan, 3rd Batt. Dorset Regt. ; the Hon. Rupert Anson. 7th Batt. Royal Fusiliers. “ University Candidates to be Second Lieuts.—15th (the King’s) Hussars—A. C. Straker ; the Queen's Own Cameron Highlanders—A. P. Gordon-Cumming ; the Rifle Brigade (the Prince Consort’s Own)—A. J. Murdock.” “ Cadets and ex-cadets of the Officers Training Corps to be Second Lieuts.—Infantry—R. B. Arnell, C. H. Alison, F. J. Christison, G. R. R. Colman, B. Pawle, J. A. Higgs-Walker.” “ General Reserve of Officers—Cavalry—H. P. Chaplin, late Lieut. 10th (Prince of Wales’s Own Royal) Hussars to be Lieut. ; Fort Guards.—P. Pearson-Gregory, late Lieut., Grenadier Guards, to be Lieut.” T h e long lists have not been dredged for these. They all occur in two days’ notifications, and have been taken almost at random. There are many others ; but at present it is impossible to give anything like a full record of the cricketers who have received commissions or have rejoined the Army at the call to action, let alone of those who are marching in the ranks.