The Guardian And Evening Star, with which is incorporated the West Coast Times. TUESDAY, JANUARY 5th, 1925. A SIDELIGHT.

Hokitika Guardian, 5 January 1926, Page 2

The Guardian And Evening Star, with which is incorporated the West Coast Times. TUESDAY, JANUARY sth, 1925. A SIDELIGHT.

Tin-mu was much mystery about happenings during the progress of the Croat- War. J lie Walter Fage letters are presenting many sidelights on the course of events. Mr Fage was the American ambassador in J-omlon, and as it was desired the United States should make the earliest entry into the arena, lie was made the confident of much that was otherwise secret, so that- lie

could report confidentially to his President exactly liow things were going. Colonel Senior was an American officer selected secretly in 1014 to go to the front with the permission of the British War Office to see things exactly as they were, and ultimately repot on the situation to Mr l’age, who in turn was to give the President the sifted information. The letter of .Mr Page to the President on this phase of the war is a very interesting sidelight, and is worth republishing on that account. Karlv in January, lillo, Mr Page wrote:—Colonel .Nquier, our military attache (and a thoroughbred if

ever I knew one) )iim just tunic back from five weeks at the front mainly with the English, but partly also w ith the French officers in command. He is the only soldier of any army who lias been allowed to go. Not more than half a dozen men in Jamdou know that Squier has been to the front. He and I had to do all .sorts of things to get permission. I formally transferred him to our French Embassy ; he formally presented himself to a series of French military authorities; Joffre received him; then, after more of this freemasonry, be was permitted to go to General French’s headquarters, where he presented a note which read some-

what like this: “Dear French: Here’s Colonel Squier,, you know.- -Kitchener.” He lived with the officers and men (in every English corps) lor live weeks, and nothing was concealed. He went in the trenches. Bombs ’missed him only a few yards time and again. Why all this secrecy? you ask: For several reasons and for no reason than the English silence. In the first'plaio, any man who can’t fall in and take care of himself is in the way. Then they don’t want it reported. The favour shown to Squier, as I make it out, comes partly as a compliment to the United States and partly as a personal compliment to Squier. He knows them from Kitchener down, they have great

respect for Ins judgment and his knowledge. Squier is a West Point man, a Hopkins Ph. D., a distinguished inventor, you know, and a member of all the learned scientific societies in London, and a fine military scholar. He talks and writes with the directness and simplicity of a child. Well, he has a lot of lessons. His report (my guess is) will be a military document of very great value, ns I’m sure his brief diary is. which T have read. . . . And except for the noise of the guns it’s a silent way. No bugles, no music, no shouted commands. The officers dress as the men; eren a strip of recj

on the collar is too good a target. The officer gives his orders by silent motions; nobody speaks. Nobody wears a sword, or a riband, or a stripe--' just deadly, silent, grim striving to death. No army lias begun to report nil its dead. In fact, it is doubtful if the commanders themselves know tli.eir losses with accuracy. Recruits are all the time coming and new men take the vacant places in the old regiments] The horror of this thing outruns all imagination. Yet somehow nobody seems to realise it—men marched into the trenches to as certain slaughter as cattle when they are driven into the killing house in a stockyard. There’s nothing of the old “glory’’ of war—the charge, the yell, the music, the clash, and the giving way of one side or of the other. That’s all gone. When they bayonet one another to death, more men come from the rear and (ill the same ditches. Just plain, beastly butchery of men in such numbers' as were never before killed in battle in so short a time, every mollifying tiling gone—use any weapon, lie in the nirnl wounded for 12 hours, lie dead unburied for Bays; and when bombs strike a farmhouse and kill a family, that’s not a subject even of passing remark. Some of the English officers said to Colonel Squier: “How are we to get out of this ? The awfulness of it passes belief. But what can we do? Bun and let the Germans take the coast and Paris? That’s our only alternative. We can hold them and kill them and he killed ourselves till their nerve gives out. or their men are exhausted, or their ammunition is all gone but until some one or more of those things happen we can’t drive them far; nor can they drive us.” The Allies can keep putting in millions of men with ammunition and food so long as they can get them as they now get them. The Germans also can keep the same pace a very long time—unless the Russians require an ever-increasing German army on the east; and whenever the Russians get into German territory. there will he another trench deadlock. The two trench deadlocks will, of course, at last wear the Germans out; hut if it goes on as this deadlock has now been in France for several months, the war may last five years. By that time most surviving men in Germany, France, and England, and hundreds of thousands in Russia, will he cripples; and this side of the world will consist chiefly of women. Of course this sort cf thing can’t go on till annihilation have overtaken them. But T can’t yet see how it can ho ended till Germany will agree to restore Belgium. When Gorina r will agree to that—after Russia has got Constantinople—then, no uouht, some arrangement might he discussed. Sir Edward Grey told mo within a week that not a word about peace or terms of peace had yet been spoken between the Allies. The taking of Osteml. the effort to reach Calais, and flic bombardment of tilc er-l coast towns of England indefinitely postponed England’s willingness to consider peace. Sc far as I recall my English history, fhiracc was never before so united and s determined in any struggle.