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Aviation History
1916
1916 - 0268.PDF
|/yGHTj MARCH 30, 1916. IN the office of any newspaper going to press in mid week, Monday is always a busy day. I do not mind work ; I am a whale for work when I feel like it, there fore I never feel " Mondayfied" in the sense that it generally conveys following on the day's rest on Sunday. Yet on sentimental grounds I am inclined to look upon Monday as my nervy day. If I cared to trace back through the years, I have little doubt that I should find that Monday was my natal day; it is possible that I shall slide into the unknown on a Monday. Henry VIII. died on a Thursday, as did also his son Edward, and his two daughters, Mary and Elizabeth. I have little doubt they came to look upon Thursday as their unlucky day. I have nothing much to say against Mondays except that I started work on that day many years ago (by a strange coincidence on April 1 st), and have had to restart on many Mondays since. Monday is my nervy day because it is the one day in the week on which my mail includes many letters addressed to " The Dreamer." It is the day on which I receive letters telling me what people think of me and my " Reflections," owing, no doubt, to their having plenty of time on Sundays to run the rule over me. And, I don't mind admitting it, it is not always compli mentary. The anonymous letter is supposed to find its way quickly to the waste paper basket. Mine do not meet with such an untimely end. I save them up. I have a huge pile of them. When somebody writes to tell me that I am "A true English Gentleman," or something of that sort, I just run over my letter file and find out I am nothing of the sort, but something altogether different. I have been called by an endearing term by a lady who forgot to put her name and address, and I have been called something very different by a gentleman who had no objection to giving his full name and address, follow ing it up with the information that he weighed 168 lbs., and no fat. Up to to-day, however, nobody had ever suggested that I was of German extraction—the blow fe 11 this morning. The letter came from Edinburgh, and it is signed in full by a sportsman with an honourable Scotch name, and written on note paper bearing double crests. Further than this with regard to his identity, I will not go. After all, it not so much who he is, as what he says about me, which I don't in the least mind telling. When I say it was a letter, I am somewhat stretching it. The paper simply contained these words, "From ——. A British subject without one drop of English, Saxon or Teuton blood." Well, that is all right. I wouldn't for one moment suggest that the gentleman is of German extraction—his name certainly has nothing German about the look of it, though the exact pronunciation in the real old Scottish tongue may be beyond my capabilities as a linguist. I could have liked it better had he left " English " out of it. I am a bit touchy about England. I am as proud of being an Englishman as he is of being a Scotsman. When I assure him that I am not of Saxon blood, so far as I know, I would not couple with that word " nor Scottish." However, I am inclined to think that he did not mean it exactly in that way, because he goes all out for being British. The fact is he feels sore with me because I used the word " England " last week, where he thinks I should have said Great Britain. It is possible that on occasion I have made this little slip—many writers, careless like myself, have made it. But on this occasion I was speaking about England; about the effect of the Military Service Act on English businesses, with which effect I am in touch. It may well be that the same applies to Scotland, but I am a long way off, and have no knowledge, so I spoke of its effect in England, and did not mean Great Britain. However, we will not have bad blood between us over such a small matter. We in these islands are far too near and dear to each other to fall out over trifles, especially when no belittling was intended. Enclosed with his letter was part of my sheet in last week's "FLIGHT." Interposed between the words "By the 'Dreamer,'" he has written a word intimating that I am Saxon, and follows on by writing " of Little England." He has underlined " country like England," and written in the margin, "D your England. Make it Britain." Also he enclosed a picture postcard with my notn de plume added at the end of a printed sentence, in French, in a way not complimentary. And now I hope my critic feels better. I think he must have been rather cross when he suggested in a very pointed manner that there is something of the Hun about me. I think he made that insinuation in heat, and without troubling much about facts or evidence. I am not aware that I have ever written one word in this page which would suggest that I am a disciple of "Kultur." I am quite sure I have written enough on the other side to cause me to find myself early one morning in a deep and damp moat at the Tower, if ever the " All Highest" comes to live at Buckingham Palace. In the event of that happening, I shall return to the land from which I came somewhat earlier than intended by nature that I should, but I can assure my correspondent that it will be to my own land, to the land from which our family sprung so far back as it is possible to trace, to a part of the land included in Great Britain : Great Britain, the land for which we are all fighting to-day — English, Scotch, Irish and Welsh, including all those sons from overseas. It is true I come from a county where the people are all supposed to be silly—"Silly Suffolk" it has been called; but this does not hurt me any more than when my unknown correspondent suggests that I am a Hun. Silly we may be, but I am not so silly as to think him so silly as to think that I should be silly enough to be hurt by his silly insinuations. Go to ! son of a great and honourable people. You and yours have ever been a fighting race: fighting to your last drop of blood for your own land, fighting now to your last drop of blood for our united lands, and for civilisation. We are BRITONS. Here's to us. 268
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