GENERAL WAR NEWS.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXIX, Issue 1750, 8 November 1917, Page 1

GENERAL WAR NEWS.

GERMAN CIVILIAN’S ACTIVITIES. Lieut.’-Colonel Joachim, Chief of the Chartographic Division of the German General Staff, died in Berlin recently. He was the . son of the late famous violinist Josef Joachim. The interesting feature of this officer’s death is that for years before the war he was a resident of Paris, ostensibly as partner in a business undertaking. Immediately on the outbreak of hostilities Joachim, (who was an officer by profession) returned to Germany, and was appointed chief and “reorganiser” of the general staff’s entire map department, a strange post for a “civilian” resident abroad as a “business man.” He married a well known French violinist, Mdlle. Chaigneau, and while in Paris 1s said to have devoted himself zealously to the “musical arts,” MISTAKEN FOR A SPY, ' Miss Sylvia Pankhurst, who was one of (he speakers at a demonstration in connection with the national suffrage movement, held in Trafalgar Square recently, was shouted down. An attempt was made to rush the “platform,” and a scuffle ensued with the police. During this Miss Pankhurst made her escape to Charing Cross under the escort of two male sympathisers. Here things looked threatening, as a portion of the onlookers, who had not been at the meeting, believed her to be a German spy under arrest. The traffic was held up, and a constable dashed off to secure a taxicab. Into this Miss Pankhurst and her friends were hustled, and the cab drove away amid groans, boos, and cheers. Rolled-up newspapers were hurled into the vehicle. A SAGACIOUS HORSE. An interesting story of how a soldier’s life was saved by the sagacity of his horse has been told by Bombardier H. Wood, R.F.A., who has been serving on the Salonika front. Wood says: “I was out on a mounted patrol one very dark and wet night, and got lost in the mountains. Suddenly I came'to a deep ravine, but did not know until my horse snorted and came to a halt. I coaxed her, but she would go no further. I found I was on the precipice of a deep ravine, 300 ft. deep. The worst of it was, as soon as I showed the light the enemy started blazing away with machineguns. I could hear the bullets striking the rocks just down the cliffs. If they had had a little more eleva-. tion I should not have been writing this letter. When I reached my battery next morning I gave my faithful mare an extra bag of corn.” OUR MERCANTILE MARINE. Month after month, says a writer in the Globe, Professor Dclmar, interned in Ruhlebcn, saw our British “seamen go squelching past my barracks in columns of four on their daily half-mile tramp for a basin of coffee, and I h'ave still in my ears the spirited, rhythmical clank, clank of their wooden clogs over the ice and frozen mud in the first war winter. They were a rough, hard-bitten, weather-beaten band, these inarticulate men of our mercantile marine, whose hearts were staunch, the most British of the British in the camp, ‘There they go,’ said a Nottingham man to me one day, as they passed. ‘No pro-Germans among the lot, thank the Lord! If you treat ’em fair they’ll storm hell, for you, but let ’em once get it into their heads that they’re not being squarely dealt with, and you’re right up agin’ it!’ ” COLLISION IN THE AIR. A falling aeroplane crashed into another over the Thames near Purfleet, and both machines fell into the river. The pilot of the first, Lieut. Doyne, R.F.C., was killed, but the pilot of the other machine, Lieut, Timmins, had a remarkable escape. “It seemed as if Lieut. Doyne’s machine failed somehow,” said an eye-witness, “He was flying at a fair height, and the other machine was a little below him. He swooped down suddenly towards the other aeroplane, and the wings met. It was all so sudden that one really did not notice exactly what happened. The next thing we knew was that one machine had gone right down in deep water, and the other had dropped into the muddy shallows between the training , ship Cornwall and the Essex shore. The pilot had got out of his seat and scrambled up to the tail of his machine, which was sticking up in tli air. He was rescued by a boat from the shore, though one of the Cornwall boys swam across to help,”