PAID IN THEIR OWN COIN.

Taihape Daily Times, Volume 8, Issue 77, 30 March 1916, Page 3

PAID IN THEIR OWN COIN.

GERMANS SHOT BY AUSTRIANS

ENEMY'S DETERIORATION. The fighting en Russia's south-west-ern front provides a striking index to the character of the present forces at the disposal of Germany. Over the whole of this 300 mile front the Russians have stormed and taken all the points of vantage, and now hold a line which the-utmost efforts of the enemy to retake only result in multiplied losses in men. On this front the Germans have still continued to show a certain disregard in the lives of men, though they are not nearly so reckless as was the case a year ago. But the men ar e no longer the same.

Captured Austrian officers, who fought side by side with Germans with difficulty conceal their secret satisfaction at having replied to German barbarities so regularly practised earlier in the present invasion of Russia. On one occasion the Germans retreating and eventually flying before the attacking Russians, came under the fire of the Austrian Maxims and rifles, which inflicted terrible losses upen their own allies. One Austrian officer, when questioned regarding the incident only said, "It was dark, and we made a mistake." Another significantly added, "Well, we soon discovered our mistake, but the beggars deserved all they got. How many times have Germans fired upon our te'lows when retiring, besides freely calling us all cowards, and saying that every man who gave ground ought to be killed like a dog? Well we just acted up to their ideas; they ought not to have retreated." ECONOMY OP LIVES. These flying Germans were fired upon by their 'allies for 15 minutes up to, the moment when they broke into the Austrian trenches. The Russians were following hotly behind with their bayonets. This is the first recorded instance n f Austrians reta'iating on the Germans in their own roin, and the fact ha?? double significance. On Russia's northern front five hundred miles 'away from the scene of important recent fighting the Germans are now becoming so excessively economical in the expenditure of lives that it is common remark among the Russian soldiers that it is much easier nowadays to capture a German Maxim than a German «oldier. On the other hand nrisoners continue to come in also on this front, but they are not so much captured men as de serters. A great part of the attention of officers is devoted to precautions to keen their own men behind th-} trenches for every oartv that is .sent out Plthe 1 * IfPPS a pntrhar Of i A «-mc; tr pi/ nlv rli<!arnip':».rs in the direction of the Russian lines. DISPIRITED TEUTONS. Letters taken from the dead and prisoners all tell the same sto,:y that the German soldiers are weary of the war and no longer trust the words of their officers 'although the lattar hare very markedly lowered the tone o: the flambuoyant accounts of glorious victories of. German arms elsew.iere,

which used to circulate along every

', front. The conviction seems to be ! creeping over the German troops that ! these victories elsewhere have no material existence, whereas their own [ individual failures are becoming too 1 heavily felt to find any comfort even I in real victory, if such actually occur- | red. At the same time prisoners tak|en on Russian northern and southeastern fronts are not nearly such despicable raw material as have been captured recently on the French front, according to newspapers ac(counts.

The Germans based all their hopes of victory in the superiority of their numbers of the quality of their machinery, while throwing men away with appalling recklessness. The Russians alone, of all the belligerents, have never been in the position to threw men's lives away wholesale. That they preferred to resign conquered territory hundreds of miles deep to preserve their numbers must now appear to the least intelligent as an act of sound wisdom. The scene is now setting for the final act of this terrible world tragedy, and the fighting of the present year promises to exceed in ferocity and terror everything hitherto experienced on the fields of battle.