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Taranaki Daily News, Volume LVII, Issue 178, 6 January 1915, Page 7

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'l-iK ii'iK-J J>a-SlY£!>. When the German armies were ad-Vii.ir-ng on Warsaw, the great forsiffsd city of Russian Poland was said to be swarming with spies, who did their best to sow mistrust of the Russians among the foiisii inhabitants by sprcadin° around stories that the Russians cared so little for the Polish capital, that they intended to abandon it to the Germans. Consequently, when the sound of the gun:- in the fighting near Warsaw was heard ,there was great panic in the city itself, which was only allayed by the arrival of a large number of Germans —as prisoners. It must have been a strange sight. While the battle was raging almost in the suburbs of Warsaw, bands of Austrian and German prisoners were led through the city, followed hv curious crowds; officers'raced to and fro in motor cars, Cossacks trotted by, and transports rattled along in slow, endless procession. Newsboys cried their ''extras" under the roar of the cannon.

Most of the German espionage work in Poland was done by Polish Jews. The most difficult species of this service to the enemy to detect was private signalling, which the Jews had been repeatedly eai.ght working. It was clone with smoke. By simply lighting a few ordinary house fires here and there and burning different materials they signalled whether cavalry, infantry or artillery were in the neighborhood, and whether they were in huge or small forces. White smoke indicated infantry, yellow cavalry, and blue artillery. By producing a succession of puffs, the approximate number was signalled to the enemy. The latter was, of course, dangerous, since the succession of puffs attiactod attention, whereas burning fire with steady smoke of different colors easily escaped noirce.

SAVING THE GERMAN CROWN PRINCE. , Russian generals have been shocked at the reckless way in which the German officers sacrifice the lives of their men under them when there is not any important object in view. As a gener- , al, the Crown Prince of Germany proved a failure in Prance, so ho and his army were transferred to the East Prussian front, presumably in order to give him ,a chance to rehabilitate himself in a less difficult field of operations. But his ir.Hlioif nt leadership involved him in disaster again, and troops sent to relieve him were sacrificed in thousands by sycophantic German officers, merely to keep i up a belief in the Crown Prince's generalship. In order to relieve the pressure on his army, a German attack was ordered 011 the Russians further north, no matter what the cost of life. But t!>e Germans were unaware of the strength of the Russian force in East Prussia, and had underestimated also the tactical skill of the leaders and the stubborn courage of the men. When they delivered the attack, which it was hoped would save the Prince's reputation, they found themselves unable to make headway at any point. In one place, the Germans were allowed to advance upopposed to within 200 to 200 yards of the Russian trenches. It was when they were only too near for their artillery to continue shelling the trenches that the Russians opened fire. , They had massed close together, a very -large number of machine guns, and suddenly all these spoke at once. The Russians also began a terrible rifle fire. At such close range the effect was appalling. 'The Germans bore up with heroic discipline and bravery. Rank after rank came on marching to almost certain t,nnihilation. At last the slaughter became so horrible that a breastwork of corpses was piled up, which ran in a long line liarallel t.n the Russian trenches.

CHANGE IN GERMAN TACTICS. At the opening of the campaign, the German officers were extremely reckless in wasting the lives of their men in the endeavour to overwhelm the Allies and reach Paris. It was the boast of German officers that they eould afford to lose 1,000,000 men, and still have more soldiers in the field that the French. But since the German troops have been driven back from Paris, and have had to (nt'inch in order to save themselves from being driven out of France, the officers are not so reckless in the way they employ their troops. There are now very few attacks in massed formation. "As the campaign goes on, the tendency of the Germany to rely on the splendid war material with which they have been so amply provided, rather than on the employment of masses of men, has become more and more marked," says the officer attached to the British headquarters in France, who represents the Government Press Bureau. "There aro now indications, however, that their supply of material is not inexhaustible. The circular of the Prussian Minister of War enjoins the cr.Kful search of the battlefields for equipment, and even tfic collection of t unity cartridge cases shows/This circular seems to have been prompted more by necessity than by economy, for in the recent fighting, both gun and rifle ammunition of old patterns have been found in the, trenches evacuated by the entjmy, on the dead and on the prison-

i ■ iiii li- r" ■-ii' 1 '• ; • ■ wounded in defending t:.,: ' ;in the battle lor the coast. They held •the line gallantly, but the preponderance iof German artillery punished them sceaen. There was very little accommodation or provision at the outset for the unexpectedly large numij.v o; wo.inded which were taken into all the . towns and villages in the vicinity. Some sad scenes were witnessed in Calais, where no preparations had been made to receive them. "You will imagine," savs ilr 0. V. Williams, a war correspond- ' cut describing the scene, "the interior of a cinema theatre, a tawdry place with the scats removed, but some sticks of scenery remaining, the dirty boards cov'ered with straw, on which wounded men,battered, blood-stained and iiltliy, 'lie so close that to pass from one side of the bed to the other you mmf. actually walk on their bruised bodies? Niglit and day the wounded ar'>.! in hospital trains, which pulf slowly into the goods siding at Calais town stat'on with screeching whistles, heralds of the convoy of pain. Everything that loving care could do for these wounded men was done, but what do untrained volunteers, however willing, know of antiseptic surgery or of the feeling of tin-' wounded? Oh! the scenes of horror witnessed in that sordid little cinema theatre, the heaps of soiled dressings, the naked men with gaping wounds waiting their turn on the rough deal table where the Belgian surgeons worked night and day, the pestilential air, the dumb agony of the suffering! The eager visitors that brought bread and soup to the woutfded did not know—how should they all untrained as they were?—that hunks of bread are death to a man with abominable wounds." News of the condition of Calais was sent to London, and relief' was almost instantaneous. Within four days a party of British doctors and nurses and orderlies had a magnificent hospital in full swing at Calais, and established a clearing hospital at the railway station. Eleven thousand wounded Belgians passed through this hospital in ten days.

LAUGHING AND JOKING. The spirit of the British soldierly, the same spirit which makes the alien say that the British are mad, and which makes the English unable to concciVe defeat, is shown by the following extract of a letter to his home from a Hussa'r at the front:—"Many thanks for letter. I am going along all right; still alive and kicking. My regiment is doing very well. le it very kind of you asking if I require any comforts. I will be very pleased to_ receive anything in ; the way of gloves, mufflers, etc., but I 3o not want you to spend what little bit of pocket-money you earn on me. No doubt London is very depressing, but you have no idea what it is like here. Men and women are homeless, their houses having been blown up. We are getting plenty to cat, and everybody is happy. You would be surprised if you were here to see how the fellows carry on, singing, laughing, and joking at the same time shells flying over our heads."

THE COSSACKS' CHARGE. ] The German troops encountered the Cossacks in the fighting on the Vistula for the first time during this war, and discovered that their terrible fighting reputation had not been understimatcd. Their mode of attack, following no rule, brought terror and" death to the orderly German ranks, and some scenes of wild panic ensued. In the fighting near Przemysl a battalion of Hungarian rifles fled in terror before an unexpected onslaught of Cossacks, and threw away not only their rifles and haversacks, but also their overcoats and water-bottles, and abandoned the machine guns and ammunition carts. On one occasion, three regiments of Hungarian Hussars made a brave and brilliant charge against the Russian batteries at the edge of a wood. Just as they reached the gunners, a mass of Cosacks poured out from the wood. The Hungarians, who had faced the guns fearlessly, were seized "with uncontrollable terror as the Cossacks poured .down on them from every side. The Cossacks made an appalling impression. Even the shrieks of the men spitted by the lancers scarcely seemed human. All attempts to rally the Hungarians were useless. In less than a quarter of an hour, the fields for more than a quarter of a mile were strewn with men and horses. When four days later the first opportunity possible was taken to bury the dead, their number was found to be close on 500 Hussars killed, and 300 horses. The Cossacks are also good riflemen, but, Ifko the Russian infantry, do not consider anything save breast to breast combat real fighting.