WAR NOTES

Taihape Daily Times, Issue 220, 14 June 1917, Page 3

WAR NOTES

VICTORY BY U-BOATS.

the Changed hun tone.

LONDON, May 22

An article by Captain Persius in the Tageblatt indicates the opinion in really responsible quarters of Germany as to the effects of submarine warfare. After uttering a warning against expecting decisive results immediately, Captain Persius says that it would be erroneous to suppose that the British would wake up one morning and f i nd that they had nothing to cat. Only childlike innocence could believe that England had hitherto abstained from rationing for lack of courage or owing, to the absence of the gift of organisation.

(This contrasts vividly with the flamboyant utterances of Bethmann Hollwcg and others at the inauguration of the friglitfulness campaign—and after —which drew a picture (for the German people) of a starving England, crushed and broken, pleading • with triumphant Germany for peace.) A GERMAN" PEACE The following extract from a speech made by Victor E .Kroemar, in Stuttgart, Germany, at the International Socialist Congress in August 1907, is at least interesting in the light of recent events. "After a terrific struggle, Germany will be defeated on all sides, and a succeeding revolution will establish a German-Austrian Eepublic. Th e Slav part of Austria will go to Russia, and there will be a powerful Slav Federation. A European Federation of nations will be subsequently established. England will control all the rest of the German colonies. The English fleet will police the world, and no other fleets of any other dimensions will be permitted. Australia will gain more than other nation as the outcome of the present disturbances, as population, will flow in at a tremendous rate, and the commercial centres of the world will shift, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, through increase of population and the opening of the Panama Canal. Tremendous expansion will take place in Canada, particularly the Western States, Western States of America, and Australia, especially about the Federal Capital, which will become a great manufacturing zone." THE FUNNY SIDE OF IT. Dr. Bedford, of Duncdin, speaking in the Y.M.C.A., Assembly Hall, in Wellington, gave an amusing illustration of the kind of humour that characterises our soldiers even in the most discouraging circumstances. He had never laughed so much in his life, he said, as at the sight he saw looking over the ship's side at an Eastern port. One of the soldiers got into conversation with a native boatman below, and began questioning him about his eyes, asking whether he could move them or take them out or not. He assured the bewildered native that English eyes could be removed and put back at will, and suiting the action to the word he took out and triumphantly waved a glass eye. In a moment the man next to him had removed a cork leg. Others quickly followed till a whole row of artificial limbs and false teeth were being dangled over the ship's side. Tho crowd of natives gasping with astonishment must have been thoroughly convinced," said Dr. Bedford, "that our soldiers were built of separable and adjustable partst."

HIS CRY OF AGONY.

PATHOS OF SCENES IN HOSPITAL,

Pathos and humour arc whimsically but tenderly blended in a letter from an Army Chaplain. He begins by speaking of the patience displayed by our wounded men, remarking that some thing which cannot be analysed or described seems to enter into supreme suffering, and proceeds:—

"I remember one young Scotsman, stalwart, blue-eyed, and patient, with his face severely burned, his hair and beard like charcoal, and his eyes almost sealed up by the scorching flame that had seared him, "saying to me when I asked him, how he was. "Oh, I'm fine, thank you, Ye ken, a body' maun do his duty.' And the reply of another was, 'I canna complain. I'm nac that bad, after an' a'.' "This patience seems sometimes almost as much a gift conferred as faith itself. One day, after a big fight, I saw a fine fellow having his back dressed. He had just been brought in, with several wounds, one especially terrible in its severity. But he made neither motion nor sound. A soldier said to me, 'That poor chap is paralysed. He has no feeling.' Just then everything being completed, the bandages were put on, and he was turned over. All his pent-up endurance broke forth in a cry of agony, 'Oh, my God— I am done in!'

"I slipped very quietly forward, and he looked up in my face with a smile. 'Pardon me, padre,' he said.''l was a fool. I had no right to speak, when I'm sure there are many worse than me here.' What a brave fight he made, day by day always giving us a bright web

come and a quiet good-night, till he could recognise us no more, and passed to his test outworn.

One felt as though a brother had died, and you could not help looking next day for the brave face on the pillow, which so often had nerved us who were strong, for the work that waited us. And it was usually so. One day a poor boy was crying aloud that he' could not endure the pain of what was but a comparatively slight wound. I tried to steady him by the old plan of directing his attention to the greater suffering which was being quietly borne by those around him. "But he pointed to his neighbour in the adjacent, bed, and said, 'That's all very well, but he is comfortable compared with me.' 'Yes, chum,' replied the other, 'I have only twelve wounds, that have to be dressed three times daily.' It made more than the complainn little- and he hushed ing man think a niut, his cries for a while."