BRITISH LOSSES.

Taranaki Daily News, 7 October 1916, Page 10

BRITISH LOSSES.

FAR EXCEED THE FRENCH. WHAT EXPERTS SAY. (Special Correspondent, New York Sun). Paris, August 8. The British lost 100,000 killed and wounded in the first three weeks of the Sorarae offensive, while the French lost only 10,000, according to excellent authorities. A British officer on the staff of an infantry division and a member of the French Chamber of Deputies gave these figures a short time ago. The censorship both here and in London permits little news of this sort to be sent by cable, allowing little more, than the Official War Office statements and special descriptions of scenes back of the front or of fighting gained at second-hand, and then in little detail. The news of a change in the offices of Morgan, Harjes and Co. was not permitted to go to the United States over the wires. Tho comparative amateurishness of the British troops is tho reason assigned by French officers and soldiers for their far larger casualties. Though the war is now in its third year the British have not learned yet how to fight under modern conditions; they seem to try to get killed on battlefields like those of the Somme front, of a kind hitherto almost unknown. CHIEF OBJECT TO GET .KILLED. Particularly is this "sporting" attitude noticeable in British officers, most of them fine young fellows of public school or university training, quite fearless, but quite new at practical fighting. The officers seem to think it their chief object to get killed, the French say. Each British officer when a general'assault is ordered tries to outdo those to pha right or left of him. Once into the enemy's trenches every officer tries to push his section or company or regiment further ahead than the section or company or regiment on right pr left of him. In doing this they lose sight of the plan laid down, which provides for each unit to go just so far and no further. As long as that plan is followed the troops are reasonably safe, safe as any troops in battle can be, for the artillery fire to protect them has been figured to a nicety If they disregard it, however, their fate is often sealed. Many times whole British brigades have charged ahead as gallantly as any troops in the world, fighfing their way through German trenches, passing every obstacle, overcoming everything in their path, but never coming back. They had forgotten that the enemy now is not merely on the ground and in the air, but under tho ground. For as soon as the British waves had passed over German trenches there issued out determined bands- of Germans who had hidden in their underground dugouts and caverns with machine guns. Quickly these men, crouching behind every bit of cover, turned their machine guns upon the backs of the British who had passed. Tho number they -killed went into the hundreds in each attack. CAUSE MUCH CONFUSION. Besides the losses they caused, such parties of Germans made confusion in the British attack. Sometime whole British companies exposed to this fire in their rear would turn about to ex; terminate the Germans. They did it, hut threw the advance into confusion. Added to this the French believe the British had at first, and may have now, stronger German forces in front of them than have the French. The French suffer far less from these rear attacks than the British because they prepare' for them, expect them, and force the fighting against the bands of Germans before they have time to set about their deadly work. When the French advance each wave is followed by a second and smaller detachment, who act as trench cleaners. These men 1 are selected for their daring and agility. Armed with bombs, hand grenades, rifles, and often with long knives or 'sword bayonets, they go through all the trenches over which tho attack has passed to seo that none of these German machine gun parties are left behind. If the Germans do not come out at once they go down into the underground chambers after them, or else throw down hand grenades, which, exploding in the chambers, kill all the Germans. The' hand-to-hand fights in these pits are some of the moist desperate fighting, man to man, that has occurred in the war. The English have not yet adopted all these precautions, though as their waves pass over a trench, the grenadiers sometimes throw bombs into the dugouts. They probably will adopt the trench cleaner system of the French before long, and their losses will be smaller. There is a general belief on the Somme front in both French and British armies, .according to officers and soldiers who re■tiirn, and in particular of the same staff officer who gave the number of British and French killed and wounded, that the Somme offensive was not the "big push" at all. The Somme offensive, he and others think, was undertaken purely to relieve the tremendous German pressure on Verdun, which it certainly has done. The "big push" probably will be made this summer, this officer thought, though per'haps not until next fall. He believes, like most English, that the war will be very long, and that next fall is the earliest possible time by which it can end.