THE DEATH WHISTLE.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXVII, Issue 27, 1 June 1915, Page 8

THE DEATH WHISTLE.

SERMANS AND THEIR WOUNDED A HORIBLE ACCUSATION. The London correspondent of the Auckland -'Star" writes under date April 9th:— We have been, regaled with many more or less.authentic reports concerning the callous manner in which the Germans treat even their own wounded, but it has been left foi J M. Alexander Guchkov, an ex-President of the Russian Duma, who is now at the head of the Russian Red Cross organisation on the German frontier, to accuse the enemy of the systematic and cold-blooded murder of soldiers whose wounds are of such a character as to render them of no further value as part of the war machine. Mr Victor Marsden states that. M. Guchkov has in his possession a little piece of mechanism provided by the German Government for the military hospital officials and used by them on the held to give the "happy despatch" to men whose injuries seem likely to result in permanent incapacitation from a military point of view. It is nominally, a special form of whistle with which the hospital orderlies who inspect the fields of battle are supposed to summon extra aid when needed, and is thus described' by Mr Marsden:— About tive;inehes long, it looks like a rounded bit of wood shaped to lit the grasp. From one end protrudes the whistle, which really is.a whistle when blown, but is a strong steel tube looking more like a small bore revolver muzzle when viewed end on. At the other end of the wooden grip is a small crosspiece round which a couple of lingers can conveniently hook. A very curious whistle, and of no particular value as such. But grip the wooden handle, and catch a couple of lingers in the crosspiece, and pull apart, and you will find something working like a squirt. But it is not a squirt, not even for vitrol. the latest Germanic war-weapon; that peculiar invention of the fiend is worked by compressed air. This "whistle"'for hospital orderlies is a miniature single-shot pistol. The whistle part runs solid through the handle and beyond : when the crosspiece is pulled out like a piston it reveals a slot, into which a ball-cartridge is slipped. There is a strong spiral spring in the upper part, against which you pull to expose the ■loading slot. This spring also serves the firing pin.

The hospital men of the German Army, having satisfied themselves that a given German "soldier lying helpless on the fields is of no further usje to the State as a part of the lighting machine, applies the innocentlooking "whistle" to temple or heart or other vital spots, which even the elementary knowledge of a hospital orderly does not permit him to mistake. There is practically no noise, and the work is always done at night. The German soldier is not a man, only a part of the war-machine, and his value when "outed" is that of the useless horse, namely, the skin he wears. Whether the hapless soldier might recover and live out an average lifetime minus*a limb or two is of no importance; this particular bit of mechanism of the war-machine is no further use lor war and is "scrapped" on the spot, like the badly-wounded horse. So the German soldier's value is not the life that is still in him 'nit the uniform he wears, which may serve for another bit of newly-impressed mechanism. It is quite a small thing this "whistle," but, as Mr Marsden remarks, it explains many things. .It reveals to us the inward meaning of reports we have read of a moaning roomful of wounded German soldiers suddenly becoming dead silent on the appearance of one of their own officers. It explains why the Russians, when they finally took Prasnish found German wounded hidden away as far as the poor wretches could crawl, in attics and cellars and styes and barns, anywhere to escape the eye of their butchers appointed to the German Army by the German Government, with special weapons devised and made for the ends of war as understood by tile Germans. rpjßcsacßssszianmaMmivaßmm