From ‘Humours of War Relief in the East End’, The Spectator, 26 June 1915:
There may be often in the minds of the mothers and wives a little confusion as to what their menkind are actually doing at the war, but they frequently give a dashing and graphic description of what they imagine it to be, such as “Quelling them Turks,” or “following up the Indians and Russians,” while another said her son was “driving a motor in the mountainous parts of Paris.” Anyhow, they make a better shot than the Hampshire farm yokel, who said he “’eard ‘ow as our Bill is in the Sewage Canal, because o’ them turkeys.” Names also present very little difficulty when reduced to plain English, and one woman described how the foreign soldiers were landed in London the very day of the “battle of ‘Dick’s Mud,’” and, indeed, many did arrive with the mud of Flanders still thick upon them. More recently, “Nervy Chapel” strikes one as pathetically apt.
The mothers are very brave, though often tearful, when describing how they miss their particular “good son,” and one can only say—Without these good sons where would we all be? For the mothers of England have done nobly for their land in bearing these lion-hearted sons and then giving them, though it be with tears, at the high call of the Motherland.
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