ANGRY GERMANS AND GAS.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXIX, Issue 1762, 8 December 1917, Page 1

ANGRY GERMANS AND GAS.

In the course of a message sent from War Correspondents’ Headquarters on Saturday (September 23), a Scotsman correspondent says:— Between battles the great Armies of Britain are far from idle. The smallest operation demands from the men engaged the same heroism and resourcefulness as a great battle. The routine experiences, particularly the raids and reconnaisances, furnish many incidents of extreme daring. All of them show the undiminished energy and determination of the men. When you hear alle- . gations of the failing moral and 1 war weariness of our troops remember that soldiers in such a plight could not perform acts like some of those I propose to quote at random. The private of the Lincolns who killed live Germans, took three prisoners, and marched the latter back with an undressed bayonet wound in his arm could hardly be considered war weary. The Lancashire sergeant who took a Lewis gun into a crater in the wilderness of concrete forts east of Ypres, and lay there for two days and nights, holding lip the enemy, is not a fair example of failing morale. MANY PLUCKY DEEDS. Nor can the peaeemongers claim as their own the Londoner who brought a German machine-gun back from a raid, and returned alone into No Man’s Land to get the other one that he had left in a crater, “because it was too big a load to carry both,” and he thought it was a pity to leave it there for the Huns. The record of every day’s work along the British front is full of such stories. I should like to give the name of a private who, after a raid, when a number of his wounded comrades had been left behind in a shell-hole close to the German lines, remained with them two days and nights, fearing up his clothing to make bandages, and eventually brought all of them back, I could name a score who, like a certain machine gunner I have in mind, went on to their objective in a raid, although wounded, and insisted on finishing the work they had begun. The majority of these incidents concern men of English county regiments and their comrades of the North, because they form the bulk of the great fighting forces in Flanders and France; but the same fine spirit is apparent everywhere— Irish, Welsh, the Canadians, Australians, and other contingents from every part of the Dominions oversea. THE “SWINE” WHO INVENTED GAS. : The new German mask is less pli-. able than the rubber type, although of soft oiled leather, and less easily adjusted. Rubber is scarce, and ominous warnings of economy in leather have reached the garrisons in the zone of death. If the Canadians decided to take Lens, said a recently captured prisoner, we could go back to a good position in the open air, and have a chance of life. But as long as we are made to keep Lens, the bulk of the troops must live underground, and gas drifts into the network of tunnels and sleeping rooms, and hangs about. The whole city is so accurately ranged by the Canadian guns that it is death to try to remain on the surface. In brief, the Canadians have pounded their opponents into a state of passive resistance. They no longer try aggressive pushes into the territory they recently lost. Even their aeroplanes dare not try to harass our infantry in the open, as they have been doing further north. ' Some planes venture across, for observation, but they -are distinctly cautious, “Do you think,” asked a Prussian officer captured on Hill 70, “that if we had not first used gas the Eng-, lish Would not have tried it?” “I am sure they wouldn’t,” replied one of his captors. “Then I wish we had the swine who began it,” said the officer. “Our men have never gone in for crucifixion, although some of you Canadians think we have, but I think the troops in Lens would willingly crucify the man who invented gas.”