TERRORS OF WAR.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LVII, Issue 126, 21 October 1914, Page 2

TERRORS OF WAR.

GSRMAKss' SXOIUE& EXTRACTS FROM OFFICERS' DIARIES. Bordeaux, September 19. There haa been given out, officially, iaforwafion concerning incidents of the fiyhiing and persouiU experiences furnished by German prisoners or obtained from documents seized by French troops. It relates particularly to the fighting around lllieim* between September 11 and ltf. d Gemma artillery officer wrote: "Modern war is the greatest of follies. Companies of '250 men in the Tenth Army Corpa have been reduced to seventy men, and there are companies of tue Guard commanded by volunteers of a year, ail the ollicers having disappeared." The following is taken from a letter written by a German captain of infantry: "We were surprised by the French, and I lost my company. Searching for it in a village, 1 was made a prisoner. Xow my late is in the hands ef God."

Another German officer, who was captured at Rheims, said: "For tactical reasons, the Guard had to retreat. We had many killed and 800 injured. The. first battalion of the first regiment of the Guard has not another olliccr. General von Schauk and the colonel of the second regiment of artillery of the Guard are among the killed." "With grief we learned each evening of the death of our comrades," this ollieer continued to one of his captors. "It is necessary to have lived the battle and to find oneself in the evening without food and with only the hard earth for a bed to apprcciato the truth of the words, 'Warm was the day and bloody the battle; cold is the evening and calm is the night.'" The following is from a letter written by a lieutenant of the Twenty-sixth Germart Artillery: "The Tenth Corps has been constantly in action Bince the opening of the campaign. Nearly all our horses have fallen. We fight every day from 5 o'clock in the morning till 8 o'clock at night, without eating or drinking*, The artillery firo of the French is frightful. Wo get so tired that we cannot ride a horse, even at a walk. Towards noon our battery was literally under a rain of shrapnel shells that lasted for three days. No hope for a decisive battle to end the situation,for our troops cannot rest. A French aviator last night threw four bombs, killing four men and wounding eight, and killing twenty horses and wounding ten more. We do not receive any more mail, for the postal automobiles of the Tenth Corps have been destroyed." An officer of the Prussian Guard Regiment said: "My regiment left for tlie front with sixty officers; it counts to- j day only Htc. We underwent terrible trials."—San Francisco Bulletin.