WAR NOTES.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LVII, Issue 150, 1 December 1914, Page 7

WAR NOTES.

WARSHIPS HEARING COMMISSION. Tlie British fleet will, it is hoped, be increased by the addition, by December, of the Dreadnoughts Queen Elizabeth and Warsprite, and by March 1 by the addition of the Malaya, the Barham and the Valiant. All five of these ships are similar? They.have 27,500 tons displacement, and they are notable as being the first Dreadnoughts to mount the 15in gun, of which they will carry eight in four turrets on the centre line. This gun weighs !)B.G tons, and it is enormously superior at 10,000 yds to anything afloat to-day. Another remarkable feature of these ships is that they will have a speed of over 25 knots. Their belt armour will be from 13 to Win thickness, and this combination of qualities will enable them to overtake a fleeing Dreadnought fleet, and by engaging the vessel at the rear of the line, force the enemy to accept a fleet action. In the scout class, Britain will probably add, by December, seven vessels of the type of the Arethusa, which was engaged in the recent fight off Heligoland. These ships mount two OiA and six 4in guns and carry four torpedo tubes for the 21in torpedo* The speed is 30 knots. ■ By March, Britain will have added two more of this class. France, by March, will be able to ?uld to her fleet the Provence and Bretagne, vessels of 23,550 tons and 21 knots speed, mounting ten 13.4 in guns and protected by a lOJin. belt. Russia, by March, will have completed her two Dreadnoughts Gangut and the Poltava, 23,000 tons and 23 knots speed, each mounting Jtwelve 12in. guns 'in foui' three-gun turn™, the ships being protected by 'Din. of side armour. Germany, before the close of the present year, should she preserve her seaboard intact, may be able to add three powerful dreadnoughts to her fleet: the Markgraf, the Grosser Kurfurst, and the Kocnig, vessels of 25,500 tons displacement and. 21.5 knots speed, protected by 1-lin. side armour and mounting ten 12in guns and fourteen (iin guns. These vessels are being built at Bremen. Hamburg, and Willielmshaven respectively. Before the close of the year Germany may add to her fleet of fast scout-cruiser's the liegcnsburg and Graudeiiz, yf 27 i knots speed, and 5000 tons displacement, which ale piotected bv a 4in licit, and nrcirk twelve 4iu guns, and two L'Oin torpedo tubes. By March 1 she may have two additional ships of this class, the Gefion and Ht'la, ready for service. All of the naval Powers engaged in the war have a greater or less number of destroyers and I submarines under construction.

. .Till'; AxciKvr rou.sir CAJ'ITAL.. . Cracow, against which the Russians arc now operating, is the. ancient capital of tlic Poles. To it turn'the thoughts of Poland's sons in all parts of the world with passionate fervour. Something of tile feelings it excites in them has been shown in an appeal published by M. G. do Rosco-Bogdanowicz, who is fearful that the' Russians, provoked to reprisals by what the Germans have done in Belgium and Frange, may vent their anger upon the walls of Wawel, the Polish cathedral in Cracow. The' fear is probably without grounds, but the spirit which animates

great kings, our great heroes, our great poets sleep their last sleep. Its stones tell us the history of our glorious past, as 'those of Westminster speak of the history of England. We drape the walls of Wawel, not with the purple that Westminster wears for the coronation of your kings, but in black, the only garb that befits the prayers they overhear ascendJHeaven for the repose of the souls iof the kings of Poland. For a century and a-half they have bone no other trappings." Apart from considerations | of sentiment, no little military importance attaches to the possession of Cracow, which has a. normal ppopulation of about 150,000. Standing on the Vistula, not far from the point where the Russian, German and Austrian Empires meet, it is an Austrian fortress of the • first-class, with a garrison in times of peace of close on 10,000 "men. In some ways it is the natural centre of the present Eastern theatre of war. Discussing tliis region in "Some Rough War Notes," which he contributes to the October number of the Geographical 'lournal, Professor Ij. W. Lvde says: "The natural objective hereof all'trafwhether from the Black Sea or the Dniester Valley, or from the Moravian Gate and Adriatic, or from the Baltic and the Vistula Valley, as Cracow, in a region of dense Polish population, which overlaps an to the great mining area of south-eastern Silesia. Here is a typical group of frontiersmen and miners, but overwhelmingly Slav both in diameter ■aid sympathy; and the Slav predominance is found all over the poor and along the Oder to within sight almost of Bresliui."