WAR NOTES.

Taranaki Daily News, 27 April 1916, Page 3

WAR NOTES.

A TALE OF THE SUVLA BLIZZARD. A medical officer who was present at the evacuation of Gallipoli, writing home, says:— "I believe I have told yon of the great blizzard and frost at Suvla; and here on the fourth and fifth dsys dozens of men came in frozen solid to the knees, many with gangrene far advanced. A lot of them were mere bovs, hut they refused to leave the trenches till reinforcements poured in. Even the sick in hospital rose up and took their rifles and went up to hold the line. It was truly magnificent. "One little picture I will draw illustrative of our life for five days. One morning n Newfoundlander in a trench near us called up attention to two figures in a ditch out bv the Salt Lake. I took out a stretcher party, and there we found two lads of the City of London Regiment sitting in the ditch, frozen and dead. One had his arms round the other, who held fragments of biscuit in the corner of his mouth.

"Fancy the struggle for life across" one and a half miles of frozen marsh in the teeth of a blizzard, and then, within sight of the lights of our camp, the weaker had given way and his chum had sat down with him and put his arms round Jiim and tried to get him to eat a. piece of ration biscuit, and so death had found them both. The agony of the battle of Sari Bahr was matched by the despair of the blizzard at Suvla. But these men were the heroes of the child's dream."

THE GERMAN DEAD. "The amount of German dead is to the end of 1015 at least 700,000 —and the total wastage of any army is a high multiple of its dead; always at least five times as much, and usually nearer six," says Mr. Belloc in Land and Water.

This estimate would give the German wastage at 3,500,000, if the multiple of five is used.

Mr. Belloe says that "the period has arrived in which the enemy can only by an abnormal treatment of his human material maintain himself at full strength, and the limit of time within which that abnormal treatment can be sustained is at once short and its duration clearly appreciated."

SATA.S* BEHIND THE TEN COMMANDMENTS. /

• "Will you allow an old sailor to offer an opinion upon the subject of arming merchant ships 'for defence only'?" writes Admiral C. C. Penrose-Fitzgerald in the Morning Post.

"To lay down the law that an armed merchant ship is not to fire until after she has neen torpedoed is childish nonsense, quite unworthy even of a sane lawyer. The latest German threat is not'only audacious bind', hut ridiculous bluff. Truly, the Germans have no sense of lnimor. If they had they would never mention the words International Law. Satan taking refuge behind the Ten Commandments would not be more gyotcsquc."

NEUTRAL SHIPS. EXPLOITING THE ENTENTE ALLIES llow neutral owners exploit the Entente Allies is shown in the Welsh coaltrade to Italy. Mr. Houston states that in March, out of 4$ steamers loading coal at Cardiff for Italy, only three were British. The importance of this statement lies in the fact that it explains the complaints of Italian importers. Italians formed the unfortunate impression that they owed the high price of coal to the rapacity of British shipowners. But in the six months ending January, 1010, there were 203 vessels carrying coal between Cardill and Italy, and of these only. 5-1 v/on; British, In every cas6 the foreign vessels were charging higher freights than the British. Yet the Italians were so sore that when M. Briand, the French Premier, went to Italy, it was found necessary to solace them and also to oiler them some quid pro quo to prevent their trading via Switzerland with Germany (with whom Italy is not at war). Writing from Italy in mid-February. Mr. (!. 11. Perris states: ''Simultaneously with M. Briand's visit, and with the undertaking of the British Government to provide ships for the transport of coat at moderate freights to the Pellicula, the importation of German and Austrian produce into Italy and her colonies is now forbidden." So it was only recently that the Italian edict went forth to completely stop' German-Italian trade. And the price to be paid is, according to Mr.>Perris, a considerable diversion of much-needed British mercantile tonnage to routes constantly endangere-d by submarines based on that Austrian coast which Italy has never attacked save by the slow method of hammering at the narrow door on the Isonzo.