WAR NOTES.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LVII, Issue 303, 1 June 1915, Page 2

WAR NOTES.

1(i 1;JO LIKH CONVICTS. Miss Ortony, a young lady from Durban, who has been acting as 11 nurse in Belgium sinee the outbreak oi the war, was very uutsjioken al.i.ut tlie eiiudu-'t i.f ihe lienimiis'-towanK her, as s!ie told some gruesome stories about her experiejices oil i he baltlelields. , U "Thi'V are absolute beasts," she said. "They ' ai'e more like eseiipi'd eoiiviel s llian men. due man was so rude to me wlii-H 'I went i'or my passport that I threatened to box his ears. lor this 1 was urdei'ed lo wait for thi'ee hours in tin' olliro a.s a punishment. "W'lien 1 was working in the hospital at l.aikeii. I saw some very cruel things (i'Hie. When (lie Cei'iiians were burying their dead tiley did not always wait to see whether thvy were really dead. !n one ease a iKwlly-woundcd man was buried alive." Asked as to the treatment of the Belgians, Miss Ortony said they were terrorstriken. The Hermans placarded the walls with the news of a fresh victory everv (lav, and the number ot ■ trench, and Russian prisoners taken amounted altogether to some millions, I if you added them up. 1 Asked as to whether the Hermans were confident of victory, Miss Ortony said: "J. was in a tramear one day when two ollieers were talking. One of them said to the other: 'We shall be out of Bel-1 gium in two months.' The other replied: j 'Yes, but we shall leave it a desert.'" | KIGIiT T.UoSIAX DREADNOUGHTS, j An important fact all'ecting the naval : situation in the Baltic, of which little pnolic menlion has been made, is that {lie Kt!>*inn fleet in tlioM? waters will ; shortly lie augmented by the addition ot eight new Dreadnoughts of great size and power, which are Hearing complc- I tam and will probably go into commission during the present year (says the - iScientilic American). four of these ships, tlie "Sevastopol," "Petropavlovsk,"' ( '•J'liltuva," and "(iangut," are Dreadnoughts of 23,020 tons displacement, 23 knots speed, carrying each twelve I2in guns and sixteen -I.Tin guns. They were launched between .lime and October, j It'll, and work on them having been ac- j ee'.erated, they should be in commission before many months have passed. The other four will be the largest battle- l cruisers afloat. They are named the j '•lsmalia," "Kinburn," "Borodino" and j 'Navareno.'' The displacement of these | ships is 32,200 tons, the speed 28 knots, j ami each of them will carry tlie enormous liattery for a battle-cruiser of .twelve Win guns and twenty-one S.lin DIiIVINC OUT TIIK SNII'KH. ' Some of the terrors of trench warfare, ' as distinct from a pitched battle, supply

material tor the following interesting letter from an officer in an Irish regiment:— The sniping got so maddening that T detailed off some observers to discover where the bullets were coniinge from, for they secuieil to be coming down into the trench itself. Presently a corporal of mine a good i'< Mow— reported, that, he- s;iw thrie Iko-hes from a tree about ll'.'l yards away. i!y Jove! thai- seem 'd ton much of aa < nlcrprisiiig and' 1 risky thing to do, even for the Ccrmnux, and I could hardly believe that the corporal, was right. So we waited, and there! sure enough there were flashes out of j the lne--u bare tree, too! Of course, j 1 ordered a volley to be fired into th.lt! tree -in fact, " the rounds rapid." There! were no more flashes from that tree ! Sl'licn the bullets seemed t'o come from 1 the direction of some houses ; so 1 re-1 ported (his the next day to the artillery by 'phone, and that house came down I all right. On the following Monday our artillery openul lire with howitzers 011 the Herman trenches opposite 111 c. Two skills made direct hits-- I wad 'phoned to observe results. 1 d"elare one shell lifted a part of their trench clean up into the air. Wood and sandbags were flying about ill all directions. Mi'ii could be seen running about (lazed and bewildered like "bunnies'' out of a field of corn when being cut. 1 didn't see them myself, but my men did, and they told me they hadn't the heart to tire 011 them. One ritle grenade from the enemy lodged under the armpit of one of our men, and 1 lie bally thing never exploded ! ) was bringing the grenade home as a memento, but they told me it would go oil' oil the least touch, so I had it buriel. Another thing the licggers use against us—a most weird gun or mortar or catapult. There seems to lie no bang when it goes oil', so t suggest it is a catapult arrangement which simply throws it; over to our trench. The missile itself is a mystery, too, for nobody has ever seen one, or even the splinters of one, yet. It bursts with a terrific explosion, and that is all 1 can tell the "experts."' Still, I shall be 011 the lookout to discover some clue.