May 25, 1916 
LAND & WATER 
15 
Take, for example, Singapore (where compulsory 
military service has been in force for weeks) with the 
adjacent Malay States. The Government has exercised 
no particular control, and apparently no official record 
was kept of those who came home, but there were several 
contingents and many hundreds of individuals. In fact 
the first contingent of men from Singapore was entirely 
financed by private enterprise, funds being raised locally 
to send them to England. Since then, the tea and 
rubber plantations have been cleared of all their best and 
youngest blood. Some estates have carried on with 
extreme difficulty, while others have been obliged to resort 
to elderly men. Indeed, one can fairly say that unselfish 
patriotism has been at its best in the Malay States and 
adjacent islands, where men have given up large salaries 
on plantations to serve as privates in the Army. 
Patriotic Planters 
But the planting community in the East has always 
been famed for its unselfish patriotism. In the Boer 
War, India and Ceylon furnished regiments for South 
Africa, but on this occasion the Indian planting com- 
munity was called to serve locally. Some, however, 
found their way to East Africa, where many of them had 
friends, and where compulsory military service has been 
in force for months. Apart from individuals the Ceylon 
Government furnished, at its own expense, a contingent 
of 250 men for service at the Dardanelles ; the majority 
of the survivors of this contingent have now received 
commissions. 
In China, the China Association and its various branches 
have pioneered the homeward movement of fighting men. 
They usually assembled in Shanghai, but they came from 
all parts of the Far East. In Shanghai they were grouped 
together and sent home, and in many cases commissions 
were awarded them by the British authorities before they 
left. About 450 men came to England under the direct 
auspices of the China Association ; they included 80 men 
of the Imperial Chinese Maritime Customs. Any number 
came home independently, and from Japan every avail- 
able Briton of fighting age seems to have come forward. 
One came from Hakodate in the extreme north of Japan, 
and he claims to have travelled farther to reach the battle- 
fields of Europe than any other Briton. 
Conservative estimates reckon that about 10,000 men 
have come in all from South America, of whom perhaps 
about 4,000 to 5,000 were from the Argentine. In many 
cases the journey home necessitated the crossing of the 
South American Continent and took months to accom- 
plish. Hardly an Englishman of military age remains in 
Mexico, and many of those who returned to fight — 
and there were hundreds — had seen some sort of military 
experience in the local revolutions. The United States 
perhaps have sent more Britons than any other neutral 
country, for the Britishers scattered throughout the 
various States at once responded to the Mother Country's 
call, and came back whenever it was in their power to do 
so. In many cases the expenses home were paid by the 
men themselves. 
The West Indian Islands rose splendidly to the occa; 
sion. From Jamaica and Trinidad, from the Bermudas and 
the Bahamas, and from the Windward and the Leeward 
Islands came men of the Blood to offer their lives in 
defence of their ideals. The West Indian regiments have 
taken an active part in the war, some of them are even 
now in Africa. The women who stayed behind devoted 
long hours to preparing comforts for the fighting men and 
for making ready hospitals for the reception of the sick 
and wounded. It is no exaggeration to say that for the 
last two and twenty months wherever the flag has waved 
there British women have devoted themselves day by 
day to the well-being of their fighting men, and have 
bravely forbidden private anxiety or sorrow to interfere 
with their untiring good work. 
In West Africa, as in East Africa, there has been fighting 
to be done at the threshold, and so it has not been possible 
for troops, either fair-skinned or dark-skinned to be sent 
to Europe. No one will forget the generous offer made by 
West African chiefs to help in the war. Many of them 
were Mahommedans, and prayers went up from their 
mosques for victory on British Arms, for they knew by 
report what would be their fate were Germany to triumph. 
Never in history has there been more dramatic punish- 
ment for cold-blooded, heartless cruelty than the fate 
which has overtaken Germany's possessions on the Dark 
Continent. 
Take down a map of the British Empire and with a 
pin-point designate a single speck of red which has not 
contributed to the defence of the Empire ! It is impossible. 
The Fiji Islands have sent two contingents, from the 
Seychelles and Mauritius have come no small part of the 
white population. The Falkland Islands have not only 
heard the big guns of the British Navy, but have sent 
men to the firing-line in France and Flanders. 
There is nothing more pathetic than to read at the 
present time the British papers all over the world, and 
notice the little notes about former residents who had 
gone home to fight, and whose names now appear in^the 
" Roll of Honour." Hardly a newspaper appears in a 
British possession without them, and in some, such as 
those in the Far East, where the recruiting has been 
heavy, there is always quite a long list of their own. In 
the long annals of war there is no such thrilling story 
as the rallying of the British Empire round the standard 
of the King-Emperor. 
British Battlefields 
A MAP is published overleaf which shows at a 
glance the battlefields of the British Army. 
It is not in any sense complete, for the simple 
reason that it would be impossible, on a chart 
of this size, to mark every actual scene of encounter 
between Britain's fighting men and their foes for the 
time being, but it does demonstrate the world-wide arena 
over which our little army — the " Old Contemptibles," 
to give it the Kaiser's nickname — has fought in order to 
estabhsh the foundations of Empire. Most of these 
campaigns are, of course, familiar to our readers, but this 
synopsis will come somewhat as a surprise to many, for 
Britons are apt to forget that no nation, not even the 
French, has more feats of arms to its credit outside the 
cockpits of Europe. 
Of deliberate purpose all reference to the British 
Navy and battles on the sea are omitted, for " there's 
never a wave of all her waves but marks our English 
dead." And it would be futile to attempt to chart the 
deeps and the shallows which have listened to the guns 
of British ships when they have spoken in defence of 
British rights and have thereby made secure the freedom' 
of the seas. 
These battlefields of Empire tell a different tale than 
mere military glory. On many of them have been won 
that sympathy which ever exists between clean and brave 
fighters, be they friends or foes, and from which when the 
decision has been obtained, mutual respect and under- 
standing spring. To give two instances, there are the 
campaigns against the Sikhs and against the Ghurkas, 
neither of which, by the way, are shown on this map 
owing to lack of space, which has caused many little 
wars to be crowded out. None of the fighting races of 
In'dia withstood our troops more stoutly than they, yet 
almost before their wounds had had time to heal, these, 
our former stubborn foes, were fighting shoulder to 
shoulder with us before the walls of Delhi as our staunch 
comrades. Again and on a larger scale has this miracle 
of a right understanding and mutual respect springing 
to quick fruition from hard-contested battlefields been 
witnessed in South Africa. 
Nor has the Briton only risked his hfe where military 
glory is to be won. No sooner are the dead buried and 
the wounded cared for than he turns to the fields of peace 
and risks his life as gaily in the development of new lands. 
The British Roll of Honour in these fights against Nature, 
these struggles of peace times, would be a long one where 
it only possible to compile it. That well-known verse of 
Kipling's describes in vivid phrase the work to which so 
many of these battles have been but the prelude : 
Keep ye the Law — be swift in all obedience — 
Clear the land of evil, drive the road and bridge the ford. 
Make ye sure to each his own 
That he reap where he hath sown ; 
By the peace among our peoples let men know we serve 
the Lord ! 
