MESOPOTAMIA.

Taranaki Daily News, 17 May 1916, Page 5

MESOPOTAMIA.

THE RESISTANCE AT KUT, ANOTHER GOPDOX. GENERAL TOWNSHEXD'S APPEAL. FORCES AND HOSPITAL EQUIPMENT INADEQUATE. Times and Sydney Sun Services. London, May 15. Mr. A. G. Hales, in the journal John Bull, attacks the Government for the surrender of Kut. He says he knows that General Townshend expected the Government to send an army strong enough to save him and the Empire's honor in the East, and quotes a letter from General Townshend, saying: "I send yon letters after the battle of Cteaiphon, where we won a pyrrhic victory, having 4500 killed and wounded in ar. army of 14,000. The enemy has four to six divisions against my one. I am amazed that our politicians did not kritrW that these heavy reinforcements had reached the Turks. Had I got into Bagdad I should never have got out again. All this has come about through not heeding my protest when ordered to take Bagdad."

The Times, in a leader discussing Florence Nightingale's birthday, says: "There were no means for the treatment of more than half the wounded at Ctesiphon, and the wounded lay out in the rain for hour* after the action. They were brought down the river in boats, without shelter, and in the wet and bitter cold. Some of the boats of wounded got mixed up with other traffic, and the men were without food for hours after falling. The commonest medical necessaries were lacking on the voyage downstream. One hundred wounded were (sent down with one doctor, and no orderlies and no 'servants, and with un- ■ suitable diet and a shortage of the simplest appliances for the wounded. Wounds were not for days, and many died from dysentery and exposure. No blame was attache-/ to the doctors, who did their duty manfully and nobly, but the task was impossible. They were always shorthanded, and when they sickened and broke down they were not relieved. We deliberately withhold many particulars of the horrible and pitiable story, trusting that we have told enough to awaken the conscience of the nation and parliament."

THE ADVANCE ON BAGDAD. r.rSSIAX STRATEGY. APPROACHING NINEVEH. Received May IC, 10.30 p.m. London, May 16. TV Morning Post's Petrograd correspondent says that Russia is making a strategic, instead of a tactical, attack on Bagdad, and has quietly moved to Mesopotamia by the shortest and easiest road. Their columns are now within fifty miles of the ancient city of Nineveh, wfoere the Bagdad railway reaches the Tigris, and doubtless they are on the •railway already to Kut. The Russians are at Revanduza, in rich fertile country, within cavalry ride of Nineveh, and the vanguard is close to Arbela, where Alexander the Great defeated Darius.

TURKS REINFORCED. BY GERMAN TBOOFS. /RUSSIANS STILL MAKE WAY. Re:eived May K>. 9.50 p.m. London, May 15. The Daily Chronicle's Petrngrad correspondent says that the Turks in the Caucasus have been reinforced by twenty thousand Austro-Gernian infantry, cavalry, an.l artillery, in the hope of breaking the Russian centre between Erzerum and Erzingjan, but the Rusaiaoi are advancing ou the coast west of Trebizond, and are also converging on the' Tigris bases. It is reported that the Turks from Kut have been despatched north to bar the Russian advance to Bagdad. Petrograd, May 15. A communique says: We randouze, in the direction of Mossull, witk ammunition depots . and convoys «f .food. Cavalcv we Jjotfx Bursuuw. _