WAR NOTES.

Taranaki Daily News, 15 January 1917, Page 6

WAR NOTES.

WAR CONTRASTS. t & letter from n young-officer to Ms frii'iiiU at home affords a striking contract between lite in the front trendies *nd life behind the. Unci. Here is his pen picture of what it feels like to par>ticinatfe in an infantry advance:--'"We stood to arms quite early. Both •ide-, appeared to have settled down to . the usual evening duel—the moderate eiaek of..rifles, an occasional shell, and tuw and'then a bright light to flood a brilliant whiteness over everything. At f1.30 p.m. the storm broke. All those daik cWds were suddenly let 100-e tov aether/and it rained torrentially. The Bghtnihg lit up the sky en masse, and •ucu was the brilliance and duration - of the flashes that we, who had been •watching in the dark so long, were daz*jed by the brightness and forced to Sunk our eyes. At 7.30 the storm was

•i its height. At eight o'clock precisely feiro rockets shot up into the darkness. enxved gracefully and broke in red. A ©heer, almost drowned by the noise of j<fte rain and thunder, burst'from the iritishf lines and travelled rapidly down 'She flanks. From that moment the doors of hell were opened and all the noises, nighty sounds and shrieks and Whistling-fame out and -played among * 'Jther trenches; It was a veritable in-

jferno. The big guns that we had been -" -Stringing up and carefully concealing the past few days were pelting at the German trenches, each shell emitting its boom, shriek and bang as it sped and Bits its'mark. The crackle of Tide fire '" Jg|» like..whole streets of houses falling, «t fronting shells seemed to dance '- Bom point to point along the enemy - IfcWu'ches like a jumping Chinese cracker, and. all the vwhile the rain poured down, .the thunder 5 rolled and lightning lit up Sia mpst extraordinary scene. . . . . the cover of smoke bombs. How were ■ &ungs going-r*hould we be wanted? '■ • 'despatch rider handed an envelope to MS, Major. The —th Division have Broken rigTrt through; advanced 2000 yds _ Shth little resistance, enemy giving „" jttieinselves up in large numbers.' It gn» enough. We went to breakfast." s . IN* BILLETS.

I "We change from the trendies to the pfcllets is startling: "I came here from " toe firing line " the young officer writes, an old metropolitan motor omnibus, was oil the blessed thing fdr six . lotus. The architecture of our billets . £t to be praised, the finest piece of work ht&ag the cloisters and chapel. The latter, by the. way, is used as an officers' lecture room. There are numerous beautiful stained glass windows, and the i rooms being brilliantly lit up, present a tine view to the visitor who enters the 'gates by night. I am having the hap-' . pleat time I have yet had out here. To fcfcaft' with, I'have a bed; secondly, I «Jaa go to 'bed ag soon as I like after Sinner, and I need not get up till seven; ' thirdly, I only work for six hours per day. - The iness is excellent; we are jnilea Md miles away from the firing line; there is nothing to trouble about •Wrhen once the day's work is done, and ' %|p my clothes' are dry—a tning that has not happened for months and months. I f ■ Wtth the course would last a month in- |? stead of the week it is goiug to. . . . 'lt is rather a marvellous place, this general headquarters. The brains of .the British Army Seem very well dcvcl!oped. One thing, it is not easy to move , .-without permits. There are something ' iike seventy brigades represented here, one officer having been selected from «ach brigade. It is really a fine sight to "see the school sit down to dinner, ' aach officer dressed according to the traditions ot his regiment. The various Scotch regiment seem the most variable from any set style. Glancing my eye over the. room now, I can see officers of } a number of famous regiments. All *■) these men, so spick and span now, were fwo days ago smothered with mud in ifche trenches; each has been drawn from some part in the far-flung firing line. tome have the Military Cross, others ive the King's and Queen's medals for the Boer war. Some went over the parapet in the recent advance; each '■' lias a history attached to him, and as you talk of them each seems more in- , '.teresting than the preceding one. ,*_'" ''Yesterday I saw a most exciting duel between a Taube and a French biplane. They spotted each other at a high altitude and new to the fray like fighting ' ieockSi They were both armed with machine guns, and kept up bursts of fire while they manoeuvred round each jttfhef.] Suddenly the Taube fell like a '"> -stone for 1 about iooft, then righted itself * and glided slowly to the ground in our territory. There were iwo men in it, a pilot and an observer. The pilot had ,£ten ehot dead in mid(air, hence the 'Hodden descent of the aeroplane."

j| Although it is not possible to punibh %ie Germans adequately for the atroci7jH«4 they have committed in East Af- ' Jriea, the campaign will not be unprofitable. The famous authority on Central 'Africa-,- Sir Harry H. Johnston, recently •'wrote; — "Rightly governed, I venture to 'predict that Africa will, if we are victorious, repay us and our Allies the cost of our struggle wilt; Germany and 'Austria. The war, deny it who may, (wis really fought over African questions. The Germans wished, as the chief gain of victory, to wrest rich Morocco from French control, to take the French Votogo from France, and the .'Portuguese 'Congo from Portugal, to secure from 'Belgium the richest and most extensive tract of alluvial goldfield as yet discovered. This is an auriferous region

which, properly developed, will, when ihe war is over, repay the hardest-hit . ©f. our Allies all that she has 10,4 from the German devastation of her home lands. The mineral wealth of Trans- ' Zambcsian Africa—freed for ever, we

• Will hope from the German menace—-is gigantic; only slightly exploited so far. Wealth i* hidden amid the seemingly unprofitable deserts of the Sahara, Xu- - tia, Solhaliland and Xamakava. Africa, 1 predict, will eventually show itself to be the mo*t richly endowed of all the ' continent's in valuable vegetable and (liineral substances. But in the political Map' of the future there must be no reason allotted to the German lla»—after What Germany has dene and has threat- . do."*