GERMANY'S NEW SUBMARINE.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LVII, Issue 191, 21 January 1915, Page 7

GERMANY'S NEW SUBMARINE.

j "Discussing in the Fortnightly Review ■ the question of a new type of submarine Germany is building, Mr Archibald Hurd, the well-known writer on naval , matters, holds that the submarine, des , pite the successes achieved during tin I wr.r, has been proved to be neithe; ; invincible lior invulnerable. Whether o. . not it will drive the battleship off the /seas is a matter on which naval oificcn. . of experience hold diverse views. What the submarine is they know, but what it may become 110 one knows. It may I be capable of almost indefinite develop- { ment. When the war opened, Germany ' possessed about 30 submarines —perhaps j33 or 34. Two-thirds of these were compartively small and slow. But in 1912 ! the German naval authorities began | launching a new series, beginning with I the under sea bout numbered 21. There j is, -Mir Hurd says, every reason to be- | lieve that it is these new craft, num- ; bering about a dozen only, which have 1 I**'" operating far from their bases, and have robbed us of so many ships. These i latest submarines are, in fact, very remarkable vessels. Instead of displacing less than 20 tons, as was tile case with the early boats, they have a displacement on the surface of UOO tons. They are 213 feet long, and have a beam jof 20 feet. Their speed on the suifaco is said to be 18 to 20 knots, and when submerged about 12 knots. They carry [ sufficient fuel to travel 2000 sea miles without replenishing their oil tanks, and they have three tubes for the discharge of torpedoes, besides which they carry two guns—one a 14-pounder on a disappearing mounting, and the other a one-pounder weapon of special construction, which, it is claimed, is not injured by exposure to sea water, and is, therefore, on a fixed pedestal, remaining in position when the boat is submerged. As the Germans have always been supreme in optical matters, Mr, llurd remarks that it would not be surpi ising if in the construction of efficient periscopes they have outdistanced' all rivals.

THE THIN KHAKI LINE. An officer in the Army Service Corps writes:— l You know, reading the home papers —I could almost wish that a horde of ti;esp gentry could descend on old England's shores. I don't think anything but that will ever rouse them to the awfulness of the thing that the thin (very thin in some places) khaki line in the trenches out here is fighting hard to keep from them; and that very thin line is doing something each day that has never been equalled, even by the thin red line of bygone days. 1 lam not patting myself on the back, for my work lies behind the trenches, and I take off my hat to every mother's son who is there. I should have thought that the recruits to the new army would have exceeded i'tc Geeoncv million by now, and yet they don't seem to have got the first completed yet. If they could only take the youth of England on a personally conducted tour along our lines here so that they could realise what we are up against, I think they'd join in a body; but, failing that, the best way to buck them up would be a hundred thousand Germans landing in England. I don't suppose they'd get very far; still tlicy would bring home to the armchair brigade as nothing else ever will something at least of the awful way in which .Belgium and part of France, have suffered. Those who are out here are doing mir'acles.

A DOCTOR'S EXPERIENCES. Dr. Ludwig Tasker, of London, writes from No. 14, Clearing Hospital, sth Division, in France:— For the last fortnight wc have not got to bed until 4 a.m. The majority of our wounded will do well, but there are large numbers of terribly hopeless ones. We had oie poor fellow whose tongue was actually on his neck, aa the result of having had his left jaw broken off. Of course, he could not speak, and when, at a sign from him, I gave him a sheet of paper, all he wrote on it was that his captain was worthy of the Victoria Cross. . .

Last night we had a wounded German I of eighteen years of age, who had been out three weeks, and had only ten weeks' training. If the fight was even in numbers, or even two to one, what would our fellows not do? The Gerbans have five machine guns in the battalion to our one, and it is the machine guns and shrapnel that do all the slaughter; their infantry will not come to grips with our force. When firing at night, the Germans also fire sham flashes so that the position of their actual guns cannot be located, and to guard against unsuspected night attacks they set Are to haystacks or to anything handy. Some of the villages are nothing' but masses of ruins. With regard to firing at hospitals, I scarcely believe that the Germans do it purposely. But the spot that seems suitable for a hospital seems also always suitable for a battery, and when the Germans find a battery, they may, at the same time, hit a hospital. One of our men found a wounded Ger-

man on a farm. He was puzzled how* to explain to him how to get upon the ambulance waggon, when the German spoke English to him like one of ouj Tommies. What a splendid spy he would have made if necessary! We have no doubt that there are many about the country. We think it a great mistake to let refugees return so soon, for it is difficult to distinguish between refugees and spies.

We are covering ground passed over by the Germans. They have not left a cupboard or a drawer alone. We respect all property, and when we go where the Germans have been, we tidy up tnings so that the place looks very mucli better when the people return. Day after day the same thing goes on here—fighting, fighting, fighting, collecting the wounded, and burying the dead. • The news (official) that we get from headquarters is very satisfactory. Only to-day we were told that our fellows had captured 700 prisoners and left 1500 Germans dead on the field. What a

godsend morphia is. Some of our injured suffer from ghastly wounds, but to some of them I give morphia, and to others cigarettes, and you would be surprised to find how soon the brave fellows fall into a snoring sleep. They are cleared by means of motor-ambulances and I am told that they are in EngI land within twelve hours of leaving

here. By the way, the chauffeur of one 'if our ambulances is an English gentleman, who has an income of £l-0,000 a year. Not being able to fight, he decided to give his motor-car, and here he is like one of us. —Daily Telegraph.