WAR NOTES.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LVII, Issue 227, 4 March 1915, Page 5

WAR NOTES.

FOND OF THE KOW. Mr Lees Smith,' M.P., who lias been at the front since the outbreak of the war, asserts that a certain number of men, who muS have the blood of the old cave-dwellers, still in tfieir veins, have grown so accustomed to the existence of the trenches, that they are always indignant when they are relieved. "Men have complained to me," said, "when for some reason they have been withdrawn from the fight : ing winv.that they cannot sleep in the unnatural quiet of thesworld where no shells are "to be heard in the night." Mr Lees Smith was struck by some.thing distinctive about one of the orderlies. He found that he was one of our most .distinguished, playwrights—"one whom I should certainly,place among the first six 'English masters of the art, and one whose plays are .being performed ia London at the present time." Mr Lee? Smith describes the dressing of a bad wound. "Thinking that the poor fellow was to be subjected to this torture—a Fionehman must be move than usually nervous at finding himself surrounded by a group, I said to him that we had not come there to hurt him. He replied: 'Do not be afraid of hurting me as much as you like. This suffering will soon be over, buf if T lose my leg, my wife and children will suffer for the rest of their lives.' Poor fellow! His courage did not help him. T have learned since that his leg was amputated at the hip."