WAR NOTES.

Taranaki Daily News, 5 October 1915, Page 8

WAR NOTES.

LACK O'J CHAUFFEURS IN RUSSIA. Among the many difficulties felt by Russia in the Eastern campaign was the lack of chauffeurs capable of driving tlie American motor-trucks. Advertisements appearing in Canadian and American papers offer high wages to motor-truck drivers "willing to go to Europe for not less than one year," as the advertisements state. Russia, of all the fighting nations, has been most handicapped by its lack of motor equipment, by its poor roads, and its luck of chauffeurs. Hundreds of good drivers have fallen into Ihe hands of the Germans, while the '.(■ it have to conquer great obstacles I'icforc they can render valuable services. Less than. 10 per cent, of tlie entire Russian people are acquainted with motor traction, even in the most superficial manner. An infinitesimal number arc able even to handle a motor vehicle much less repair it. And as for really I good drivers for this hazardous and diffi- | cult work of keeping huge armies supplied—Russia, lias less than 5000 men. The motor vehicle plays an important role in all the fields of battle, but when the history of the war comes to be written it will be found that its most spectacular and most clearly visible effect has been tlie paralysis of the Russian masses as compared with the flexibility of the well-equipped German-Austrian armies. In the western field the army truck is a valuable addition to tlie railroad and to tlie horse-drawn supply train. In the eastern battlefields it's presence or absence—its smooth working or its breakdown —represents tlie different e between victorious advance and precipitate retreat. It is in the rapid inarching of the Russian campaign that the motor truck shows its full value and full capacity as a military weapon.