WAR IN THE VILLAGE.
[To THE EDITOR OP THE "SPECTATOR.") STS,-It is refreshing, to those of us who believe that Eng- land has an Imperial mission in the world, to read in the Spectator of August 19th of the mother who said of her son, " I 'udn't a-stopped him by ea much as a word, fur, 'tie a noble thing to fight for the Queen"; but all parts of the country, alas, are not so patriotic. To us in East Yorkshire the Queen is an abstraction; or else regarded as " a very good landlord" on the neighbouring estates belonging to the Woods and Forests. We express surprise if any one lifts his hat on hearing the National Anthem, " though I'd do it meson in a minute if it means respect like to Queen." "The Lords of the Council and all the Nobility " are obsolete phrases in the Litany, which we do not understand; or like the gentry are a kind of absentee landlord. We have never seen the pageant of a military spectacle or even a battalion on the march. We look on soldiers as " a bad lot," and are very shy of employing them when they are discharged,— "Tramps 'as mostlins been soldiers." Hence it is regarded as demeaning to any respectable family of the cottager class to have a son who " goes and 'lists," and even when a gentle- man recently entered the commissioned ranks, it was thought "a pity he didn't do better for hi-sen." In some measure this arises from the fact that lads who have been in trouble, or even in gaol, are accepted by the sergeants ; but I should like to know whether there is not some other cause to be found in our past history which affects the Anglo-Danish, strongly Protestant, race which inhabits Holderness, and which, I believe, makes the East Riding the worst recruiting district in the country.—I am, Sir, &c., N. J. M.
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