SOLDIERS, NOT BUTCHERS.

Taihape Daily Times, 20 June 1918, Page 6

SOLDIERS, NOT BUTCHERS.

We are told that the Kaiser is commanding in person in the present battle, but that he is in Belgium, ten miles deep in barbed wire (says the London “Daily Chronicle”), Wellington and Napoleon were never more than three-quarters of a mile at Waterloo, with which contest the present titanic struggle has been compared. The comparison does notr irolil good. Not even the prophetic visit of Lord Roberts was able to visualise a combat such as this. He deemed impossible the massed attacks in which the Germans have been flung forward into areas which have become abattoirs. He thought that open formations, scattered men separated from officers, would be the rule. At Waterloo, with 70,000 men on our side and 80,000 on the French, the battle, on a three-mile front, was compressed for the” most part into a one and a-half-mile front. Such packing of men, he thought, could never recur. He foresaw, however, as clearly as Haig, the need for intensive training “of the men. But the Kaiser in Belgium, in personal command! Wellington rode up and down his lines the -whole day long.

“Sir, I have a distinct view of Napoleon and his staff,” said an artillery officer, approaching him. “I have my guns trained on them, ready to fire.” “No, no,” said Wellington hastily; “no, I’ll not allow it. It is not the busines of commanders to be firing at each other.” And when bloodthirsty Blucher. in the hour of triumph, proposed to centre all efforts on the capture and immediate execution oT Napoleon, Wellington, while admitting the necessity of the capture, said, as to the major proposal, “You and I Have played parts too distinguished in these transactions to now become butchers.’ ’ That was the old style of personal command.

, AN EPIC OF THE AIR. | The following story was told by a Staff officer just home from Amiens front: A British bombing ’plane was attacked by eight German triplanes, and a veritable hurricane of bullets was directed at the British machine. Pilot and observer w-erc both wounded —strangely enough, each of them was hit six times—but nevertheless the latter made such good practice with his gun that he sent three of the Hun machines crashing o earth. Then their own “old bus” caught fire, and began to descend. The wounded pilot had to stand up from his seat to avoid the flames, but he continued to handle the controls and the wounded observer continued to fire upon the remaining five hostile aeroplanes. They landed with a crash in No Man’s Land. The pilot lifted his worse wounded comrade out of the burning ’plane and together they crawled to an adjacent shell hole. Then their three remaining bombs exploded, but without damaging th<«f.n further. At night a party from our lines stole out and brought them in. Both are now in hospital, one in France and- the other in Blighty.