AIR AND SEA CRAFT IN ACTION

Dominion, Volume 8, Issue 2344, 29 December 1914, Page 5

AIR AND SEA CRAFT IN ACTION

; A NOVEL COMBAT GERMANS STAKED EVERYTHING ON BZURA BATTLE. AUSTEIANS 11MEAT , •SUFFER ENORMOUS LOSSES • Much'the most interesting item of war news fo-'day is the etory of the British raid upon the German naval harbour of Cuxhaven, at the mouth, of the Elbe. A flotilla, consisting of the light cruisers Arethnaa and Undaunted, with a force of submarines and destroyers, crossed the North Sea at night and penetrated the mouth of the Elbe on the morning of Christmas Day. Although the whole of their naval forces, apart from the ships at Cuxhaven, lay close by, at Heligoland ' and Wilhelmshayen, the Germans were apparently deterred by their unwillingness to risk an encounter with the British Fleet from making any serious attempt, to cut off the small raiding flotilla. Two Zeppev lins, four sea-planes, and a number of submarines were dispatched from Heligoland, but the British vessels manoeuvred off Cuxhaven for three hours while their sea-planes were bombarding the warships in the .roads. The damage . done is not stated. The British units eventually , got clear away. One aviator, Flight Commander Hewlitt, is missing. A British aviator flying over Brussels dropped a dozen bombs upon a German airship shed, and apparently damaged it to a serious extent. ' Little change is reported in France or Belgium, but in Poland the Russians have pushed their advance on tho northern 'bank of the Lower Vistula to Wloclawek, within thirty miles of the German for- ■ frees of Thorn. Wloclawek commands an important railway connecting Thorn with Lowicz, in the region now occupied by the German central army, which has been making desperate but unsuccessful efforts to pierce tho Russian line on the River Bzura; In Southern Poland ffie Russians have driven the Aust'rians aoross the River Nida, and the Austrians have been defeated also in Northern Galicia, and are reported to be in. full retreat further soiitn, in the region north-east of the Dukla Pasß.