WAR NOTES

Taihape Daily Times, Volume 7, Issue 108, 9 January 1915, Page 2

WAR NOTES

About a thousand Red Indians in full warpaint rode into Saskatoon, Canada, ,and said they .wanted to fight for England against the Germans. They were much disappointed when they were tcl dthat the Government would remember their offer, but could not employ them just then.

The disastrous effect ol the /war on the Scarborough season was revealed in the annual report of Scarborough Spa Company. The receipts were much in excess' of previous years up to the declaration of war. After that there was a great falling off. No dividend was declared,, and the "balance of £2,425 was carried forward.

The "New York World" summed up the South African situation in a way that could hardly be improved upon: "It lias been the dream of German writers, like Bernhardt, that if ever Germany and Great Britain went to war, South Africa would be the scene of a general rebellion against British rule. What has happened is a minority Boer revolt against the Boer Government of a loya] British colony."

"STONE FOR STONE."

Writing in the "Figaro," M, Mauric* Maeterlinck, after stating that the Grand Placo, the Hotel de Ville, and tlie Cathedral in Brussels are mined, and that the Germans are ready to blow them up at any moment, ask* why the Allies should not decide upon German hostage toAvns, which would answer stone for stone for the Allies' cities. If Brussels, for instance, was destroyed, Berlin would be razed to the ground. Hamburg wculd disappear if Antwerp were devastated, .while Nurnburg wculd guarantee Bruges, and Murd< h' would go bait for Ghent.

THE MODERN WOUND.

As one wanders about these limitless wards of the stricken (says a eorvaspendeut thg "Times," describing a vl?it *o a RitsF s nn hospital) mo h iiK-robsingly impressed by what

fir: hvnsn be ins: can stand. and still Swiih modern medical treatment, re..,.,.p... f vcm _ Q ne nian that we saw had IVS3H shot through the head' quite cleanly, and in two weeks was nrac--1 !iV-!ly well. Others shot through the | abdomen, stcmach, bladder, lungs, and, 1 in. f:'ct. all parts considered vital I twenty years ago, were recovering as j smcctbly as thrush to bo shot were i i' x rati <-f the ordinary man's day of 1 work.

HERO.JC MESSENGER

A bicycle dispatch rider, after hav!njy carried orders to the brigadierstruaral, placed bis motor-cycle against 9. tree while he smoked a cigarette. Shells were bursting all around him, and one struck his machine, which was destroyed. The cyclist was then ordered to take the reply of the brigadiergeneral afoot to the divisional commander. In carrying out his task, he crossed the fire-swept fields. Then he encountered a party of Germans, but jumped into a river and escaped by remaining in the water for eight hours. Eventually he got his message safely to headquarters.

PEACE ARMY WANTED.

"Wanted, a Peace Army to Cultivate and Rebuild Belgium." This suggestion is made in the October "Review f-f Reviews," which, of course, speaks with an inherited tradition of special knowledge in such a crisis as the present. Mr Richard Higgs, who makes the suggestion, is horrified, as a farmer, at the "awful, agricultural mess" that Belgium.will be in when'the Germans have left it —trampled crops, land hammered down by armies, men and horses scarce, next year's harvest almost impossible. Could we not. he says/ organise a peace army to help the Belgians prepare for the harvest —SOO British ploughmen,say. to plough 3,500 acres a week; together with another army to rebuild homes, and show that the skill of our architects is as great as that of cur generals.

WOUNDED CORRESPONDENT

I met to-day, says Mr Harold Asliton, in a message to the "Daily News," a strange, battered figure of a man—the first newspaper man, so far as I am aware, to be wounded in the war. He was Mr Donald C. Thompson, one of the "camera men" oT the "New York World." He has been in twenty-six battles with the German Army, and he was in Dixmude the other day with half-a-dozen German officers, when the British shelled it for the twentieth time. A shell smashed into the already ruined 'house in which they were taking shelter, and, exploding close by him, wounded him in the face and tore a part of his nose away and stripped part, of his coat from his back. He told me that the fight in the Dixmude area is the fiercest and the most relentless of the wtiole war. Dixmude has been talcsn and re-taken, bcmbarded and bombarded again.burnt and re-burnt, until there is very little of the place 'eft. It is a ghastly, smo-! king ruin.