The Taihape Daily Times AND WAIMARINO ADVOCATE MONDAY, MAY 1, 1916. NINE THOUSAND BRITISH SURRENDER.

Taihape Daily Times, Volume 8, Issue 102, 1 May 1916, Page 4

The Taihape Daily Times AND WAIMARINO ADVOCATE

MONDAY, MAY 1, 1916. NINE THOUSAND BRITISH SURRENDER.

(With which is incorporated The Tai bape Post and Waimarino News.)

It was indeed dispiriting news that came to hand last evening just as people were going to church, informing us that brave General Townshend, with nearly three thousand British soldiers and six thousand Indians—nine thousand in all —had been starved out of the beleagured town of Kut-el-Amara, and had surrendered in a body to the Turks. This is an indignity and loss that may have an effect on present methods of recruiting; a disaster has come upon British arms owing to shortage of British soldiers. It is little use cavilling at the Government for not sending sufficient troops under Generals Gorringe and Aylmer to relieve and rescue the force in Kut, because they hadn't them to send, but it will make many converts to the belief that the Government in England, by its opposition to the only method left of securing men, is responsible for this degrading disaster, which will open the eyes of the British public who oppose compulsion to the fact that universal service is the only means by which the lives of those already at the front can be saved, and by which tnc Allies can win the war. Had Britain sent the force to Mesopotamia the Turkish menace warranted—admittedly —these nine thousand men with all their military equipment and artillery would now have been a high-spirited fighting unit instead of a dejected mob, herded in Turkish prison camps by Turkish masters. But this will surely rouse, not only Britain, but all her outlying dominions, into a thorough understanding of how outrageously callous and inhuman it is to leave nine thousand men to such a cruel' fate; these men .have no choice. It is compulsion under the uplifted scimitar of the Unspeakable Turk, after suffering one hundred and forty-three days in a besieged Turkish town, throughout n winter that is noted for severity and floods, suffering the pangs of hunger, starving to death, waiting and longing for the inadequate force to relieve them that Britain, in. criminal negligence, never sent. There are those in New Zealand who have relatives in that brave body of soldiers, who have

felt that what has ■ happened was inevitable, and now they ai;e concerned for those troops that are so near, to the capitulated town. With large numbers of freed troops greater attention can be given to Generals Gorringe and Aylmer, who, it seems, must now g<? back in t-he direction of Basra. Now that Britain has lost its army of ten thousand and jeopardised the security of, a relieving force, what wiH be done? Will Britain ignominiously withdraw from that arena, a beaten, whipped people, or, after the sacrifice of ten thousand men, will the force now be sent that was needed in the first place. It does really seem as though the Government was continuing that policy on account of which War Minister Haldane was shunted off the , Cabinet track. The cry has been "want of money" prevents this or that being done. Let us remember in this connection bow Mr. Haldane ridiculed the late Lord Roberts, who, at the close of a noble and glorious life and career, sought by aD means in -his power to induce Britons to realise that th e Empire was in peril of its very existence. Haldane said, "I have a Worse objection t'o Lord Roberts than that. If you carried out his programme you would find you were SHORT OF MONEY for the Army and Navy. You cannot keep up both." Lord Roberts, who was styled an amateur by Haldane, proposed an expenditure of from five to ten millions to ensure peace, and now we find the Haldane-Asquith way has involved an expenditure of five milions a day, and the loss of thousands and thousands of our brav e people "We are s-hort of money!" Haldane says "It would be robbery!" Massey says; and still we blunder on, sacrificing to th e Unspeakable Turk and the cut-throat barbaric Hun our, brave lads who voluntarily endeavour to save the Haldanes and the Masseys with their money. Britain is short of soldiers, and in spite of the pressure brought to bear; by her Allies she persists in the insane course of dalliance that is taking from -her even those troops that she already has. For it is either a case of that ten thousand loss being made good or ignominiously scuttling, fleeing before Turkish conquerors out of Mesopotamia. When, not only British people, but also those in New Zealand, recognise the real peril in which they stand t-hey may decide to abandon the "shortness of money and robbery" pleadings, and set to work to find the money ptk l x 1 men that are sufficient to win the freedom that is imperilled. W e ask our Government to ponder well over this loss of ten thousand men, many of whom will die of starvation and. disease, while they all are craving for the food they are likely to get from their Turkish masters. Let there be no fear, or incapacity tolerated in the ! pursuance of an adequate recruiting scheme, and let there be no meanness or detestable greed about money. It is robbery, is it, to devote sufficient of this country's wealth to winning the war. Only one or two disasters to British arms such as that at Kut-el 1 - Ama.ra, and Ave shouldn't hesitate to say to Haldanes and Masseys: "Lay not up for yourselves treasures where Turk and Hun do break through and steal, but discreetly use it in saving your homes and what you may, perhaps, hold equally dean, from the hand of the marauder, murderer, and enslaver. On e more such disaster will .throw Roumanians and Greeks, if not Spain .into the balance against the Allies. Let us realise the danger while there is yet time and not-'go blundering on with a shortage of men. T-he whole country is calling for the one sane and possible method of getting the men that our lad s already in the fray are longingly waiting for. Th e Allied arms cannot afford another disaster like the Kut-el-Amara capitulation—ten thousands of British soldiers, starved into subjection, lay down their arms to the Turks, to Britain's eternal shame.

TMs morning 2S men of C Company, 6th Mounted Rifles, under Lieutenant A. C. Nathan, left Taihape to go into annual camp at Rangiotu.

At the public farewell to the Taihape quota of the l(3th Reinfircements on Saturday evening, Mr. E. W. Smith, M.P., said that in future in the settling of Crown lands preference would be given to those who had enlisted. "If there's only enough land to go round," he said, "those who have made the sacrifice are entitled to the land before any one else." (Applause.)

"Th e Man Who Stayed at Home" gives us a vivid realisation of,life as it is in. Britain to-day, and the incidents are grimly close to fact and strongly emphasise a danger our nation has acknowledged but scorned to her cost. It is a wonderfully nealistic and thrilling.play and the first of tiro war dramas to be introduced by J. C. Williamson. Ltd. It will be presented at Taihap e Town Hall on Saturday. May G'th, by the "Within the Law Co." under the direction of Dramas Ltd, On Monday, May Bth, another famous J. C. Williamson play will be produced. The season will b e for two nights only. Mr. C. E. Darvill, who has- retired from business, notifies that all accounts due after the Bth May -will be sued for without further notice.

Property-owners on the Pukenaua Road notify that all persons found trespassing on land with dog or gun will be prosecuted.

In another column 60 pairs of roller skates are offered for sale by Mr,. W. Jordan, Box Company, Ohutu.

Mr. W. Prime, storekeeper, Rangataua, is wanting one box of good butter weekly.

Yesterday morning a troop train conveying members of the 13th Reinforcements who have been spending leav e in Auckland passed through Taihape.

On Saturday evening, at the public farewell to the Taihape quota of the 16th Reinforcements, Mr. Wiltshire, who .was a privat at Anzac and later received his discharge on account of wounds, stated that many of the public were saying that th e boys who came back were not paid. To his own knowledge -he could say the statement was untrue and they were being treated fairly.