INTERESTING ITEMS.

Taihape Daily Times, Volume 7, Issue 240, 30 June 1915, Page 7

INTERESTING ITEMS.

INTERMEDIATE WAR. A Avar eorrspondent lias no chance of getting into th e firing line. H;e may enter the military hospitals and hear from the lops of the patients what it is j really like. A surgeon, who was wound.; ed at Neuve Chapelle confided to me' that the use of modern trenches will prolong the war indefinitely. are .like rows of turnips in a field," he said bitterly. "When you have destroyed or captured one, you are face to face with another. It reminds me of nothing, so much as the taking in of new ground on an Irish hillside. You have got a little bit, and you think you are going to make progress, but you suddenly find yourself against a new order of rocks, and you say, 'How long, O Lord, how long?'" PATHOS AND TRAGEDY. That is the human spirit of ordeal which a surgeon or chaplain catches from the trenches, when he is burying the dead —not singly; mind you, but in numbers. Ah, it is a tearful thing to see fine young lads, with the bloom of manhood scarcely ripe on their faces, laid in graves, covered over, and left for ever and ever. Not a drum is heard, not a funeral note,' except the quiet service, the "Last Post," and then on they. go-, to the same thing, over and •over again. ' / ' . ' ; . HELL IN THE TRENCHES. That is war as the surgeon and chapj lain know it; that is what follows the swift blowing up' of a trench —the swift infantry .attack, the rout cf the enmey, :md then the pitiful counting up of yie dead. A trench battle alsts about ; ..in hour. What., with. it 3 infernal violence, its big and small guns, its rifles and its bombs, it coud hardly last longer. The thing overwhelms the indiviiual man, who crawls through the wounded, or does not crawi at all, but lies dead far from th e land of his fathers. War is the grave as well as hell, with purgatory often between.but the great gleam of it, to me* is the human splendour of the men. They ■.re not merely fine, they are majestic. "SO PERISH ALL TRAITORS." I know of half a dozen German prisoners in one trench who had been guilty of treachery, and of treating our wounded badly. They were very penitent when captured, and spoke tearfully of their wives and children, and how sweet a thing freedom would be if they could but get it. Our captain listened, and then made a gesture to his men. "Take them away," he said, gravely. "The thing they ask cannot be. We must do our duty." They were marched away, and heard of no more. And that is war, all bloody and pitiless. I would not say that kindly things do not happen between individual men on opposite sides but mostly you find them on your own side. BREAD AND STATESMANSHIP. One has to admit that there is terri-' ble distress in the •.■poorer parts of London. There are bread lines formed at day-break by th e hopeless out-of-works who cannot afford the increased price of the loaf, which has risen to B£d. A deputation* of Labourites recently waited on th e Government, in the hope of discovering a remedy for the awful rise in food prices. Nothing happened. The average statesman finds little or so glory in orating over dear loaves. It is like asking a star actor in a fourcurtain tragedy to step out of the limelight and talk to the audience about cheese and potatoes. The statesman ar e too busy, just now, stumping the j country in the recruiting interest. So ,"j the bread cry is smothered up. in the , war-shout, and the Ministers,Wiho could deal with th 0 thieving gangs of bakers and millers, prefer to spend their time .. where the camera man and the publicity agent will show them spouting armaments or war statistics. The statesman to-day, who knows Ij!s job," sooner talk about whales and hyehss -s hunger-that : is ' amorigVmil- _v than suggf*ft ; a.rsaie&y lor the .bread- \'U lioasf of pWpte. : \.l