Signs From the Smoke

Horowhenua Chronicle, 3 July 1915, Page 3

Signs From the Smoke

(13y ALBERT DORItING'IGN in til©

Auckland "Star.',')

London, April 8.

This week I have been to Southampton to watch the hospital ships some in. In three days • there were eight transports of 15,000 tons to be realt with by the various ambulance corps. It was. & never-to-be-forgotten sight In long, dismal processions, £Ee wounded came ashore to be dratted to the military hospitals on the South' Coast of England. The nature of the wounds is olten too horrible for description. Tetanus or lockjaw prevails. Frostbite ami -wounds from shrapnel are equally plentiful, llifle bullets either kill outright on the wounds heal quiolily and leave the patients little the worse. The ' reason of this is in the iiigh velocity and the fact that the bullet ibecomes sterilised in its passage through the

air. Not so shrapnel, which bursts from a shell, and when it does not kill sets up tetanus or other forms or blood poisoning.

NJERVOUS m2I{iROR.

The men whose nerves have been shattered oy noise and eliock are difficult to nurse. Often a patient will be sitting quite still, listening to some , music or the talk of a friend. His whole being may appear tranquil and self-possessed. Then suddenly he tries to fling himself from his couch, screaming, and clawing ifis 'blankets in tiie direst agony. The unrse tells you that such outbursts are duggto nerves, alio not to extreme pliysicajl pain. Nervy men are usually imaginative, and they get the habit of recalling what they have seen. 1 have not yet met a soldier who was anxious to return to the lire-line. A month of modern fighting is enough to smash the courage of a Spartan. I

A BOIUUJBLE PICTUBE

A sergeant with two arms missing asked me to put a cigarette in his mouth. I met him at the Monte Dole Convalescent Hospital, -Bournemouth. -He had just come from jSeuye Cliapene, which was recently the scene ot an uprecedented artillery attack on tlie part of the British and French. 0»i a front of two miles, guns were massed at distances of ten yards. These guns were trained on a certain spot'accupted by the enemy. At a signal the whole line opened lire. Said my sergeant who had lost both arms:—"J had a pair of field-glasses and was able io see the effects of the uonibardment on tiie German trenches. At -nst there 'was nothing but smoke, but 'when the wind shifted 1 saw that- the ear f !i ii- ol the trenches was boiling like stew. You watched this stew for some time, and saw humps or red, white and blue boiling to the top just like shift in a pot. After a while I began to understand that the blue and red s'tiiff \ias German men and horses and artillery being churned into the earth and out again by the .French eeventyj fives. When we got there we saw a big mash of leather, ibones, gun wheels and military equipment. . There was nothing alive in the fcrst or second liire of trenches. . I doubt if a flea survived. We just boiled up men and horses with eight thousand shells. And, Tio.lll the word "fire," there wasn't a' shell that missed the spot. We got it too. One of our divisions advanced too Tar, and our gfmners didn't know it. Guess the rest. Wow!" It is better to interview these wounded soldiers than get your infor-' niation from highly-paiu correjspondents. The soldier gets a first-hand picture of the light, while the correspondent Is only able to let his woolly imagination run loose in some Belgian beer house or hotel.

KIX G GEORGE V, KING BEEIi It took a Czar to make Itiissia dry. It will require teu King Georges and a uo'zen Ascjuitlis to reduce the drink" problem to a salutary basis. In April, 1910, the Chancellor of the Exchequer said he felt strong enough to light .u'eer. in April of last year lie confessed that, with even the people and churches at his back, he could not carry one salutary measure in the nice of the drink interests that sit in the .British ■House of Commons. It will be interesting to note the effect of the King's abstinence. Society is always disposed To loliow slavishly the example of JLloyalty It- will wear whiskers when its King reluses to shave or crawl into ridiculous chah-bag skirts when a Queen alfeots such drapery. JJut it is doubtful whether Society will wear a nine-inch thirst until alter the war, or suiter from swollen tongue and cinder-track throat without asserting itself. About tlTe only tune that the slumniite and tlio Society dude assert themselves is when someone threatens their poison supply. Given their choice between King and iieer. one may state with certainty that Beer will win by any numller of necks. THE DUiNK CURSE. King George has decided to stop al! 'bee|r ,wine and spirits entering the Koyai household. All over the land men are raising their voices against the" wholesale traffic in drink. One has to live in England to grasp the full meanTug of the trouble. To enter an East End gin shop is to descend into the Pit. In Uie Dominion one sees the "curse" served up from 'mirror-backed, silverplated entrenchments, by a more or less respectable barman or barmaid. There Tt is sloslTed over a fiitliy bar to mobs of diseased and unwashed crowds.N\ly first impression of a drunken East End woman will always remain. 1 tad seen nothing like her outside Hogarth's pictures. She had the appearance of a half-poisoned mammalian (seeking n loiiely place to die in. "in Sydney and Auckland the police would have, 6eizecl and quarantined her. 1 suggested at the time that a battalion of tiles. 3 wretched creatures ought to march n front Of twenty English beer lords who sit in the House to block all legislation tTiaf tries to regulate the traffic .