GENERAL WAR NEWS.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXIX, Issue 1746, 9 August 1917, Page 1

GENERAL WAR NEWS.

WHERE LIFE IS NOT CHEAP. The War Office, in spile of all its achievements ami triumphs in organisation, has failed to reduce effectively the expenses of the.unfortunate subaltern. Life in the trenches is as cheap as it is risky, but away behind (ho lines (here seems to have been a return to the expensive state of things which existed before the war. Some messes are models of thrift, but in others'the weekly mess bill runs away with the greater part of. the subaltern’s pay. There seems no earthly reason why the War should not impose a minimum mess expenditure which under no circumstances was to be exceeded, and if the War Office imposed the same limit of wine bills as does the Admiralty the subaltern would be glad, and efficiency would be promoted. A KIND GERMAN. We hear so many tales of German barbarity that it is refreshing to find an instance of a “Boeho” trooper of whom something good may be said. A man back in London with a “Blighty” wound tells of a remarkable experience that he had. He had been “put to sleep” by the bursting of a shell on the Somme, and on coming to himself he wandered, blindly, into the German lines. A German soldier asked him for a drink, and he handed over his water-bottle, still not realising where he was. It was the German who discovered that he had no business to be there, and who, in return for the drink, took him by the shoulder, turned him round, and'muttered, “You English. English over there. Two minutes. Go —quick!” He went. TOLL OF GERMAN AVIATORS. Copenhagen, June 9. —The death notices in the German papers indicate what a terrible toll the western battle is taking among German aviators. (Scarcely an issue of the Ber-., 1 in, Hamburg or other papers which circulate among officers, appears without: at least eight or ten notices of deaths in the flying corps. Occasionally there is a noteworthy one, like today’s announcement of the death of Lieutenant Schaefer, who was mentioned in despatches on Tuesday for bringing down his 30th enemy aeroplane. Lieutenant Schaefer gained dislinciion in the “Travelling Circus” of Captain von Richthofen and was lately given command of a new fighting squadron on (he Flanders front. Death notices of submarine officers are as rare as those of lliers are frequent. For several weeks none has been noticed in the Berlin and Hamburg papers, and it is possible (hat the .Admiralty has prohibited (heir publication. DISCOVERY OF A SECRET CODE The Tidens Tegn, Christiania, publishes it mat) "'lnch was found in the possession of spies in Gothenburg. It shows the extent of sea from the Baltic to the Atlantic and from the English Channel to a point north of Bergen. The map is marked with numbered squares, and has a telegram code attached. According to this ('ode a torpedo-boat is termed a “barrel, firs); scries,” British nationality is indicated by the words “first quality,” Russian by “sixth quality,” etc. For Norwegian the code word is “black-paint-ed,” for Swedish “blue,” and for Danish “red.” Tims an order for six hundred barrels first quality first series” would mean “British torpe-do-boats in position indicated by square (iOO on chart.” Information is also given by the Tidens Tegn as to how the Germans obtain (heir agents. English-speaking Norwegian, it says, are advertised for and engaged as commercial travellers. Once in the net they arc kept there by threats. A SAD INCIDENT. A strange incident of the German air raid on Eotksfone on May 25th is reported from an outlying district. A bomb exploded at the hack of a private school for hoys. Nobody in the immediate vicinity was Hit, but a fragment of the bomb killed a girl pupil who was playing tennis at another school 200 yards away. Six bombs fell in gardens, but caused practically no damage.