BELT OF DEATH

Dominion, Volume 9, Issue 2717, 11 March 1916, Page 3

BELT OF DEATH

GLOOM IN THE ENEMY'S • TRENCHES. ' A picture of extraordinary .gloom is drawn by Bernard Kellermann, the war correspondent of tlio "Berliner Tageblatt," of -the conditions at tho German front in Flanders and. I'ranco. We quote below the most important passages: • . The siege is proceeding. Along tne wholo front, hundreds of miles long, from tlio North Sea to Switzerland, ihey lie, the faithful ones, in trenchesday and-night, and at this very moment Over there, in Flanders,, the water reaches the knee. The pumps aro working, but to no-avail. . . . It they leave the trenches they wado through water for miles arid miles. In-Cham-pagne they are white with chalk, • and in the Argonuos and the Vosges they aro besmirched with clay up to the, cap. ... It is raining in streams, it snows, and the storm rages. The cold is nagging. When. they retire for a rest, they have to lean on sticks, as their legs havo become stiff from water and cold. , , ' In slime and in water, among soaked and halMestroyed sacksj tho soldier is standing, the rifle at Jus foot, in tho narrow,' tortuous labyrinth of trenches. . Hundred thousand men thus stand at this minute one evory five or ten paces, and are looking out. ... In the damp dugouts aro lying in a crumpleaup position their comrades, ready, at the first call of tho guards, to rush out and to lay their lives down m the trench, as they have done for 17 months. They are silent. They aro lying m the'little clayish niches of the trench, in dirty ovorcoats and boots, and aro sleeping and thinking of nothing. The writer, who evidently docs not belong to the German super-patriots, proceeds to depict the thousand and one dangers to which the German soldier is exposed: A couple of crooked posts, a maze of wire covered with slime, a crater of a shell full of rain water, a bundle of clothes hero and thero—dead- bodios which havo beeir lying in front, for weeks, and could not yet be buried— and over thero, 30, 40, 100 yards away; the enemy's breastworks. Tbis is- all tiiey see —this- their, 'world. And between the wires and tlio posts lios, half sunk in slime and mud. the zone of death, many hundred miles long. Nothing can cross this lifeless belt, which is still as a grave, neither by day nor by night. Columns, companies, battalions, and regiments have perished in this belt of death—hundreds of thousands of vigorous men destined to continue life and human work. Doath and its attendants have done good business this year. . . . Death is everywhere. Long as tho front.is, from tlio sea to tho snowclad mountains, it is omnipresent. ________