GENERAL WAR NEWS.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXIX, Issue 1745, 25 October 1917, Page 1

GENERAL WAR NEWS.

A MOVING INCIDENT. The correspondent of the Matin on the British Front relates a touching incident which he witnessed when a British general was inspecting his men just out of the trenches. The troops, soaked with rain, plastered with mud, many of them half dead with fatigue and hunger, presented a sad spectacle. “You have fought like the gods. England thanks you through me,” said the general. The men replied to the brief speech with long hurrahs, and one strident voice was heard to shout; “We are quite ready to go back to the line at once, sir, if necessary.” The general was intensely moved, and as he turned his head, says the correspondent, a tear trembled on his cheek. THE BITER BIT. A fishing boat with its crew and two Belgian pilots, while fishing near West Kapelle, was visited by a German seaplane, one of the occupants of which went on board and ordered it to proceed to Zeebrugge. As the ship was within territorial waters it was picked up by a Dutch search vessel and taken to Flushing. The German airman has been interned. . REPUDIATES GERARD. Dr. von Bethmann-Hollweg, the former Imperial Chancellor, asserts that James W. Gerard, former Ambassador to "Germany, in writing his revelations of Germany’s war aims, gave a somewhat free rein to his imagination. The statement of the former Chancellor was the result of his reading in a London newspaper Mr Gerard’s version of a conversation with him last January, in which it was alleged that Germany’s peace terms were set forth. LIQUOR QUESTION IN GLASGOW. By 32 votes to 31, Glasgow Town Council agreed to proceed with the plebiscite on the liquor question. The alternatives in the plebiscite will be: Prohibition during the war, State purchase, or no change. OFFICIAL MODESTY. An army officer engaged, at the Stratford Recruiting Office, when asked at the Stratford Police Court for his name for press purposes, replied, .“The War Office has instructed me not to give my name in police courts.” WHALES HIT BY GUNFIRE. Two large whales have been east up by the sea —one at Catraig,_on the Haddingtonshire coast, and the other between St. Abb’s Head and Redbeugh, on the Berwickshire coast. Both were badly gashed,-as they had been fired at by big guns. QUARREL IN THE CLOUDS, An amazing story of a fight to the death in mid-air between a German observer and pilot was told by the survivor, Sergeant Casale, to a French airman who brought him down. The pilot said that when his own radiator was hit he turned down towards his own lines in the hope of planing down. But the observer, Lieutenant Schultz, who was wounded, ordered a landing at once so that he might receive medical attention. The pilot refused, his duty being to save the machine, which was of a new type. The quarrel in the clouds became violent. Schultz, standing up, struck the sergeant repeatedly. Finally he attempted to strangle the pilot. “I felt his fingers,” said Casale, “tightening on ray throat. It was his life or mine, so I fought him. The situation was critical. There wasn’t a moment to lose, for the machine was descending rapidly. Seizing the lieutenant round the waist, I pulled him towards me, and, aided by the inclination of the machine, lifted him and threw him overboard. Then I seized the levers, and tried to right the aeroplane. I was only 600 ft. up. Closing my eyes, I waited the inevitable crash. But the machine landed in a wood, and the trees saved me.”