The stage, as well as literature, has found many ways in which it can
serve the army. One theatre is giving all the money taken in at the
door to the Red Cross; all of them admit men in uniform free, or at
half price, and a long list of actors have gone to the front. Among
them are several who are well known in America. Robert Lorraine has
received an officer's commission in the Royal Flying Corps, and Guy
Standing in the navy. The former is reported among the wounded.
Gerald du Maurier has organized a reserve battalion of actors, artists,
and musicians.
There is not a day passes that the most prominent members of the
theatrical world are not giving their services free to benefit
performances in aid of Belgian refugees, Red Cross societies, or to
some one of the funds under royal patronage. Whether their talent is
to act or dance, they are using it to help along the army. Seymour
Hicks and Edward Knoblauch in one week wrote a play called
"England Expects," which was an appeal in dramatic form for recruits,
and each night the play was produced recruits crowded over the
footlights.
The old sergeants are needed to drill the new material and cannot be
spared for recruiting. And so members of Parliament and members of
the cabinet travel all over the United Kingdom--and certainly these
days it is united--on that service. Even the prime minister and the first
lord of the admiralty, Winston Churchill, work overtime in addressing
public meetings and making stirring appeals to the young men. And
wherever you go you see the young men by the thousands marching,
drilling, going through setting-up exercises. The public parks, golf-
links, even private parks like Bedford Square, are filled with them, and
in Green Park, facing the long beds of geraniums, are lines of cavalry
horses and the khaki tents of the troopers.
Every one is helping. Each day the King and Queen and Princess
Mary review troops or visit the wounded in some hospital; and the day
before sailing, while passing Buckingham Palace, I watched the
young Prince of Wales change the guard. In a businesslike manner
he was listening to the sentries repeat their orders; and in turn a
young sergeant, also in a most businesslike manner, was in whispers
coaching the boy officer in the proper manner to guard the home of
his royal parents. Since then the young prince has gone to the front
and is fighting for his country. And the King is in France with his
soldiers.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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