WAR NOTES.

Taranaki Daily News, 25 April 1916, Page 3

WAR NOTES.

INCREDIBLE TURKISH CRUELTIES,

'One of the most diabolical massacres thai ever took place in history is going on in Turkey.. It seems almost incredible that the human mind could conceive, or the heart perpetrate such awful slaughter as that to which the Turks hßvo:resorted." This was the statement of Rev. E. A. Yarrow, a Congregational minister, who has just returned to New York- from Van, Armenia. He recounted his escape and experiences to 200 members of the alumni of Mount Vernon School, the institution founded by the Into D. E. Moody, at Broadway Tabernacle, New York. "It is not enough for the Turks to kill and maim, but the manner in which they put to death helpless non-com-batants—women and children—is past understanding," said the missionary. "Scarcely any victims of their ruthless [pillaging are put to death except after the most heartless torture. As an instance "of their fiendish methods, they left scores of babies to burn ?.live in ovens, under which raging tires had been built. The infants had been wrenched from the arms of their helpless mothers, who were dragged away with the fleeing Turks at the approach of the Russian army. "One by one they sent out from a hospital .where their own wounded arc being treated by Armenian nurses, and shot them to death in cold blood. A single wounded Russian prisoner, too ill to bo transported, was killed » 3 he lay in his cot, rather than have him rescued by bis comrades. In attempting to administer to the wounded and dying the members of our mission contracted typhus. On every side there were sickness and death. Finally, after the Armenians had enjeyed for a few brief weeks the first freedom from Turkish tyranny they had known in eight hundred years, the Russians withdrew, and the Turks returned. There was but on thing left for the refugees—flight. To be found by the returning' Turks was equivalent to death."

NO DEADLOCK IN TEE FIGHTING,

Captain Raoul Vennal, a French re[scrvist,, who has readied his home in Montreal on leave after having seen eighteen months' desperate fighting with the French Army, believes the people of Canada and all the Allied countries could do more than they realise to hasten the end of the war by refusing to buy any goods of German origin, and by planning to exclude them after the ■war.

There is, he said, already evidence that the efforts in this direction in France and Great Britain had created considerable uneasiness among the merchants of Germany, who wanted peace before such a movement gained a headway that would be irresistible. Captain Vennal is not one of those who believe an unbreakable deadlock has developed on the western front in France. He stated that it was unbreakable as far as the Germans were concerned. At the Manic, where the Germans bad twice the number of men and fifty timc3 the amount of artillery, they failed to break through, and now, with the Allies growing steadily stronger, their hope is faint, he added.

"But can the Allies break through the Germans?" he was asked.

"As soon as wo are prepared to use gas on the same scale as they do, I think we will move," he answered. "I believe we could move now, only the French desire to discover the rerv best protector against a new gas which the Germans are believed to be preparing on a large scale—the gas toxiqne. This is a colorless gas with * smell something like apples, and it kills. The men were always uneasy after the first use of gas until they were provided with good lung protectors. The Germans use three kinds of gas —lacrymogene, which has a smarting effect on the eyes of the soldiers affected, so that they cannot use them for some minutes, and which the Germans use continually; the mixte gas, having both the properties of lacrymogene and toxique gases, and toxique with cyanide as one of its components, and which the Germans have need so far only over certain sections of the trenches as an experiment, because it is very dangerous for them as well as for us." When asked as regards the French turpenite, Captain Vennal said lie had talked with many well informed on e'heraicals, and was told the turpenite was a myth. In regard to bomb-throw-ing, ho said:—"The English and Canadian soldiers are very good. Our men admire the way in which they throw bombs and grenades. They make sport of it, and keep a tally of hits and misses."