LAND A'N D WATER 
September 19, 1914 
Water Meadows and Stubble Fields 
By GUY C. POLLOCK 
IT is surelv reasonable to hope that before these lines 
appear iii print all doubt or hesitation as to recruits 
lor the new army will have been ended. As things 
now are, with the story of our little army's heroic 
stand against desperate odds hot in the memory, 
it is difficult to conceive the mind of the man who does not 
genuinely thirst for such training as may fit him for battle 
against an insolent and savage enemy. 
They say that the country needs enlightenment, especially 
in the great towns and industrial districts. That may be 
so. Yet it seems odd we have been taught to believe that 
here dwelt the sections of our people most intelligent and 
most alert. The rural districts were supposed to enjoy a 
monopoly of slow-witted lethargy. Yet the rural districts 
perfectly understand the war, 
the German menace, and the 
duty of a Briton. 
Two days ago I found 
myself, for the first time since 
war, on a chalk stream with 
a rod in my hand. It was not 
a very gay experience. A 
mist of tears and rage came 
between an angler and what 
used to be his passionate 
sport. But that is a mere 
digression. I had not been 
fishing long before I was 
hailed by the excellent fellow 
who, with another, older than 
himself, cuts our weeds for 
us and looks after our 
hatches. The second weed- 
trimming had been under- 
taken just before the declara- 
tion of war. 
His first words were : 
" Well, sir, I never expected 
to see you again. I said to 
Carter, I says, you may be 
sure we shan't see none of the 
gentlemen here again. Gone 
to the war you may depend 
on it, I says." 
With an almost apologetic 
regret I explained the non- 
military character of our oc- 
cupations and, in self defence, 
the reluctance of authority 
to accept such material aid as 
one had been able to offer. 
My friend joined me in these 
regrets. He, too, had offered 
himself. But they wouldn't 
have him. Forty-one are his 
years, and a fine upstanding 
man he is. " But, sir," he went on, " they may take us 
yet. Let us get at them devils. That is what I 
want. That's what I tells the missus and the kids." 
He had said nothing about the payment due to Carter 
and himself for the weed cutting. No doubt they had 
counted that out as a personal sacrifice on the altar of 
patriotism. But he was glad as well as surprised to receive 
it. He went on to talk about the war and recruiting. He 
told me of a neighbouring farmer who had gone to his young 
men and told them that the country wanted them. " Four- 
teen of them there was, as fine a set of fellows as you might 
find anywhere. And all cf them went, and all of them was 
accepted barring one. Too short he was— but eager, right 
eager." He told me the same tale of all the neighbourini; 
villages. He told me of ten of them talking in a bar when 
a recruiting sergeant happened along, and how all but one 
stood up at once in response to an appeal. And what he 
told me was confirmed from other sources. The villages 
of Hampshire— I heard of one. to take exception, where 
only two men could be got, and I heard of one man brave 
enough to confess that he " hadn't the heart for the job " 
(a man, this, who might make a better soldier than some 
who enlist with unthinking valiance)— have poured in men 
to the new army. And I went back to my indifferent siege 
of a great trout, engaged in the meal time of one of the most 
bafflmg evenmg rises by which I have ever been worsted 
A LIKELY SPOT 
wondering where the brains and heart of England really 
rested — in the rural or in the industrial districts. 
Angling with a dry fly in a chalk stream is not — experts 
crede — a really exhilarating business while one's country 
is at grips with Fate, while one's friends and fellows arc being 
killed to defend one's own liberties. I do not think angling 
is any more a matter for shame — so long as a man has offered 
what he can of personal service — than any other reasonable 
occupation or recreation. But it seems so. And all the 
ancient zest has gone for it. You cannot catch wary trout 
without a great concentration of will and skill. You cannot 
concentrate any thought on anything except the country's 
need, the army's heroism, the navy's splendour, and the 
duty of a man. Mj' creel was light at the day's end, and I 
found only part of that 
recreation of spirit which I 
sought by the water meadows. 
So it will be with shoot 
ing. We have the purpose 
now to go to the little shoot 
— which might so easily be- 
come the big shoot in these 
days when shoots are going 
so tragically cheap — for some 
days and to kill some part- 
ridges, hares, and rabbits for 
the general food, while still 
leisure and opportunity may 
be found. That again is, I 
think, a reasonable and even 
necessary excursion. Nothing 
will be gained by complete 
cessation of shooting. Much 
will be lost and jeopardised. 
A source of food supply 
would be stopped, and the 
evils of unemployment would 
be spread widely. Already 
the game food manufacturers, 
the game farmers, the keepers, 
the gun makers, the powder 
factories, the beaters, face the 
prospect of evil fortunes. 
It will not help the fortunes 
and the resisting powers of 
this country to make these 
fortunes worse than they 
must be. But I cannot sup- 
pose that any of us will enjoy 
very keenly the sport of 
shooting partridges in these 
desperate and bloody days. 
The thought of killing, for 
one thing, has become not 
less but more horrible in 
itself. And there are other 
fields for killing than the stubbles of this, as yet, peaceful 
and inviolate countryside. 
But these rural sports have one sound effect. They 
reinforce that actual love for F,ngland which drives men to 
any sacrifice not less surely than the hottest conceptions of 
an ethically righteous cause. One looks along the chalk 
stream, at the woods and water meadows, the broody 
peace of a sunht evening in England ; one's eye follows the 
undulations of stubble and roots and plough, of coppices and 
hedgerows, of farm and villages ; one says to oneself : "Here 
is the England that is mine, the fields I know, the beauty that I 
love." And, so seeing, no man could fail to give his unimportant 
life to save this England if England shall have need of it. 
Copyright, Alan R. Haig Brown 
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