THE BRITISH ARTILLERY.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LVII, Issue 196, 27 January 1915, Page 3

THE BRITISH ARTILLERY.

GERMAN DIARIES. HOW VON BULOW LIED. I (By W. Beach Thot. ■s.) The.diary habit lies very lu~vy oil the German soldier. He seems to have an immense desire to chronicle his doings, not so much in a spirit of egoism as for the sake of the historical sequence of events. The diaries, as a rule, are singularly honest. "The English," writes an officer in one of these confessionals, "seem to find the range much more quickly than we do. Their artillery is terrible, much more certain and -efficient than any of us had thought." Von Bulow was not more coldly and accurately critical in his book on "Imperial Germany" than these officers. He criticised things as (hey wero. A naive and straighforward document was found recently on a cblonel in one of the crack regiments. The explosion of a shell near by seems to have stunned him. At any rate he found himself one dny quite alone with very little idea of the position of either his own forces or the enemies. Happily lie wandered off in the right direction and presently ciime upon another solitary Gorman j weeping bitterly. The man was the servant of a prince whose identity is not | more precisely indicated. The "prince, apparently against the advice of his trusty servant, had gone forward into the fighting line, and no one knew what had become of him. So the colonel and the servant went off to search. All "corroborative detail" is omitted in the diary; hut the two succeeded in finding the prince, who was slightly wounded, and carrying him back to the trenches.

The succession of events is not very clear, but the colonel either now or before wandered off to find his own regiment. He was guided in the right direction, but as he approached he was seized by some members of an intervening company and haled before the commanding officer as a spy, an English spy"The colonel in a crack regiment was seized as a spy," he writes in a burst of indignation that occupies an unconscionable space in his diary. He was carried from officer to officer till he reached the general, who recognised him, and all was forgiven, VON BULOW'S DEATH.

The readiness to consider every straggler as a spy has, it appears, become chronic in the German Army ever since/ the death of von Bulow. The story of his deatli has been published, but not, I think in full detail. It will be remembered that he came alone on to a field of battle of the day before and as lie raised his field-glasse« to survey the country he was shot with a Browning pistol by a Belgian who had been wounded in the arm and lay half stunned in the ambush of a pit dug for a mitrailleuse. The Belgian then took von Bulow's horse, put on his cloak and other accoutrements, and rode clean through the German lines, where he was saluted by all whom he passed The horse was thoroughbred; and as he ceared the lines he threw off the cloak and galloped hell for leather, to safety, before a scattered fusilade. The Germans are easily cheated once, but not twice. Hence the indignity to the colonel. Most of us have a picture of the German, or, at any rate, the. Prussian — as a man whose master bias is towards war, Militarism is his gospel. Probably Bismarck was right—he had a knack of being right—when he said that the German represented the male and male qualities mark his mind; and his sense of logic and science are undiluted' by the intellectual emotions which may be described as female. But the soldier's diary shows a far other mind than the soldier's deeds; a much less male mind, if one may say so. In many ofj these diaries the. common refrain is no J more complicated than this: "Shall I ever see my darling any more?" andl a disgust of war is more frequent than | a delight in war.

Rome of these soldiers show a highly' instructed taste of many of the arts of peace. One prisoner recently presented his captor with a charming little collec-1 tion of old coins which lie carried about' with him. One does not expect the soldier to be a numismatist; but these coins, which are before me as I write, suggest something even more unexpected than a taste for antiquity. They imply a peculiar interest in 'England. The oldest is a Roman coin with Nero's superscription; but most of the rest are British. One is a naval half-penny of 1812, with the motto, "England expects every man to do his duty." Another, of the date 1795, has on the reverse the phrase, "Tin; wooden walls of Old England." Another is a British "Coventry halfpenny" of 1792. Why did the soldier carry them ? And where did thev come from? THE CULT OF HATRED. A number of the diaries have been collated and will some day throw no littl" light on the human mind of the soldiers whose, chiefs precipitated them into the Valley of Jehoshaphat. They will show how far the desire of the man who fights in the ranks is removed from the brutal and callous spirit of the man who orders war and delights in the prospect of its horror. We have had lamentable, overwhelming evidence of the cult of hatred in Germany, the deliberate instruction of the people through official lies in hatred of the British. But what difference does it all make to the soldier in the field? I know of a British soldier who was severely wounded simultaneously almost at the side of German. They were left alone for several days, during which time they shared equally all that they had; and the German, who was both the better supplied with food and the more lightly wounded, finally brought the other to safety. Two things stand like stone: Kindness in another's trouble, Courage in one's own. The ground of France and Belgium is littered, indeed, is fathoms deep, in t!ic fruits of courage, the sacrifice of brave men. Courage is manifested everywhere. But with it and about it go thoughts of kindness too; and from the midst of war men's minds, even the minds of these pure males, fall back from courage into mere kindness.