SAND BAGS.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXVII, Issue 1443, 7 September 1915, Page 2

SAND BAGS.

Tine local parties’ Guild have started to make up sand bags, the necessity lor which in warfare lias been imp ntly brought under the notice ul Australian people by the London correspondent of the Sydney Morning Herald, and also to the Mayor of Melbourne by one of their Territorial officers, “ The urgent need of the hour,” says the writer, “ indeed of all the hours to come, is sand bags, li is doubtful whether anyone not actually in the field can realise at all what sand-hags mean to the soldiers in the firing-line, and how urgently millions, and yet more millions of sand-bags are needed to stem the casualty lists.” An official receiver has been appointed, Mrs M. L. Tyler, Linden House, Highgate Road, London, W., who has an arrangement with the War Office which allows of any number of sand-bags being forwarded to the front daily. A certain amount of confusion was created before this arrangement was made by innumerable small parcels of sandbags being sent to the Office direct, but now Mrs Tyler is prepared to receive all and sundry and forward them to the right place, A colonel commanding a Royal Field Artillery Brigade writes that he wishes all the kind people who had made them woollen comforts would, during the summer, make sand-bags instead. He says that a shelter for a gun position takes 2,000 bags, and a mile of trenches requires 100,000. An infantry lieutenant writes : “If you saw a shell burst on a parapet with sandbags, and on one without, you would see how many lives they save.” The making of sand bags would he work lor all —women who cannot undertake finer work, school children, and others —and the local guild will supply material and instructions to all desirous of assisting them in this work.