WAR IN DAILY LIFE

Taihape Daily Times, Volume 7, Issue 108, 9 January 1915, Page 3

WAR IN DAILY LIFE

FAMILIES UNDER FIRE. UNCONCERN OF V7OMBN. CHILDREN AMONG THE GUNS. One of the most striking phrases of the campaign in Belgium has been the facility with whieh the population accept, the business of war an part of their ordinary life, writes Mr Fercival Phillips, of the London Daily Express. Women who have never heard a gun fired until two months ago now go about their household duties with the thunder of artillery shaking the windows and a file of wounded soldiers passing the front door, on their way to a first aid hospital. Children play about among the gun limbers that are drawn up under a cover of a hedge, while'the battery of which they are a part is vigorously shelling the advaneing Germans from a field near by. I have never been able fully to accustom myself to these sharp contrasts between peace and war. They abound on all sides. One moment you are almost convinced that the German menace is a myth, and that the soldievs who pass are merely taking part in manoeuvres-

FLOWERS ANl> 4HE DEAD.

You come upon a patch <\ fdazzling scarlet—half an acre of begonias planted by a flower-seller who sells his wares in GhentI—and 1 —and you find a mutilated corpse in a grey tunic lying face downward among the flowers. You enter a quiet village in Northern Flanders, where women are sewing in front of their houses and dogs are sleeping in the sunshine. Laughing school children are crossing the square beside the old brick church. Four mounds of fresh earth have been made beside the church and when you ask about thenl the sacristan says that four villagers—shot in til esame square by German troops a week before—lie there.

I remember reading an account of Sedan which described how an old farmer quietly ploughed his fields during the battle. During the past month I have seen scores of Belgian peasants doing the same thing without apparent interest in the bombardment of a village a few miles away. Labourers walking back to their cettages at nightfall stop to watch a column of infantry pass to their trenches as calmly as though Belgium had always been a battlefield. Imagine taking part in a "Uhlan hunt" in an armoured car, and the "bagging" of four of the enemy—two killed and two prisoners—and then motoring back to Ghent in time for an aperitif and dinner at eight! The seven adventurous young soldiers who made\ these daily excursions in the Minerva I followed a certain routine, just as they did before they left their professions to fight for their country. THE LURE. They would sally forth from the Hotel de la Poste at Ghent at seven or eight co'lock, after a good breakfast, and speed along the Brussels road until they were near the German outposts. Then the fun began. Sometimes they lured on a Uhlan patrol by pretending that the car had broken down, and mowed them down with a wickedlooking machine gun that suddenly appeared through an aperature in tht iron roof. Frequently they returned j to Ghent for lunch, depositing a woun-1 ded and frightened prisoner at the gendarmerie on their way to the hotel, and going back into the field again at two for the last half of the day's work. As a rule, the women living in towns that suddenly became the centre of an engagement were calmer than the men. I -'motored into Zele last Tuesday, and lunched at the local hotel during a fierce German attack against Berlaere, a village only three miles away. The Germans had crossed the Scheldt that morning, and were i pressing steadily towards Zele. NeverI theless, the portly landlady served an excellent lunch, with seven weary ami very dusty officers and two correspondents as her guests, and seemed as unconcerned as though the Germans had not yet crossed the frontier. When the officers finished, four of them got into their motor ear and returned to an artillery position at Grembergen, and one who had been lying in the trenches all night, and had eaten for the first time in 24 hours, lit a big cigar and told me what had happened that morning before he went back to his men.

FLIGHT AT LAST

The next morning I lunched again at. Zele, but the fare was scanty, for the landlady had to obey the order given all the inhabitants by the Belgian staff, to remain indoors. That meant German occupation was imminent. Four hours later I passed the landlady on the road, walking with her two servants beside a cart which contained a few personal effects and her piano- She was hurrying to Lokeren. The German cyclist scouts had just entered Zele. Nearly all the inhabitants cling to their homes until the last moment wifh the same remarkable tenacity. In some villages—Lebbeke, Audeghem, Termonde, for example—they have fled before the Germans and returned when the Germans fell back. At Berlaere the Belgian divisional <?orn.

mander had great difficulty in carrying out the evacuation of the village by the population, which was imperative owing to the great accuracy of the Germaii.artillery fire. The last great exodiss from Belgium to England, whieh followed the fall of Antwerp, included hundreds of families who hoped against hope that the Germane; would be swept back to thoir own frontier. They slept in towns and villages as near as possible to their own devastated ..homes, ready to return the moment the retreat of the enemy began. Others .living in Eastern Belgium, have been forced westward from town to town during the past two and a half months of invasion, until at last they reached Ostend and then—there was only England left for them.