From The Spectator, 26 December 1914:
Under the heading ” Success of Recruiting Canvass,” the Times of Tuesday declares that the canvass conducted by the Parliamentary Recruiting Committee is “progressing most satisfactorily.” We most sincerely trust that this roseate view is correct. As yet only two of the nine military commands—the Eastern and Southern—have been dealt with, but the London district will be taken in hand at the beginning of the New Year. Thousands, we are told, have already joined the colours, and tens of thousands have declared that they will come up later if called on. Apart from this somewhat oracular statement, the article contains one of the best and most moving true recruiting stories that we have ever seen. Among the replies was a letter which ran as follows:
“‘My master wont to know if i ham obliged to join your Army has he hav no one to put to look after the sheep.’ He adds—‘Please rite back to me and say yes, and then I will go up to Worcester, and then it will save all bother for your obedient servant’; and there is the postscript:—‘Please mind wot you put in the letter so that I can show it to the master.’”
The spirit of this Worcester lad is admirable. He evidently feels like every true shepherd the call of the sheep, but the call of his country is more to him. And what a picture we get of “the master”—not a tyrant, we believe, as a hasty view makes him seem, but rather a good master, to be humoured if possible. It is the song of Deborah in English homespun: “Why abodest thou among the sheepfolds, to hear the bleatings of the flocks? For the divisions of Reuben there were great searchings of heart.” If the Recruiting Committee do not get that shepherd boy away from the sheepfold and give him the chance he wants, the chance of fighting for his country, they will have failed even if they get a million other recruits. But of course they will not fail. The fact that they have allowed the letter to be made public shows they understand.
Comments