THE OSTEND BOMBARDMENT.

Taranaki Daily News, 26 September 1917, Page 5

THE OSTEND BOMBARDMENT.

GERMAN STATEMENT DENIED. Aus. and N.Z. Cable Assoc, and Reuter. Received Sept. 25, 8.30 p.m. London, Sept. 2,". The Admiralty denies the German allegation that Ostein! Cathedral was struck during the recent bombardment. ■Photographs indicate that a floating dock war, sunk, a workshop and dockyard completely demolished, and seven other works damaged.

THE FRENCH FRONT. AS SEEN BY AN AUSTRALIAN. T:TE DIRTY GERMANS. (Australian War correspondent, C. E. W. Bean). British France, June 1. Tlie French have taken a remarkable interest in Australian and New Zealand troops since they came to Frame. I'ltmcli and Russian correspondents have constantly visited the front held by the Anzac Corps. And when the French Government recently invited the Australian, New Zealand, Canadian, and South African correspondents to visit the French front, the offer i»as eagerly accepted as giving us an opportunity of knowing at -first hand something about the French, for in all this tiresome war if there is one subject upon which every Australian officer has agreed, and indeed, every man in the British Armies in France, it is their wholehearted admiration .for the manner in which the French Army and people have faced the war. Whatever discussions there may ever lie round the camp fires as to whether thn or that army or people have pulled their , full weight in the struggle, there is one ueoplc as to whom there is not, and never will be, any doubt —and that is the French. For two years, while the 1 British Empire was getting under way, the French sustained numerous losses in holding at bay the great mass of the German power in the. west. At tli". end of it they took the- offensive on the Somme when the Germans admit that they thought the French offensive power waft ended. And they have managed to comb out of their thinned numbers a, sufficient) reserve to make two further heavy offensives in the present year.

IN THEIR HOMELAND. The first thing that hits you in this French area of war—the first obvious certain impression—is that none of th» rest of us, however hard and willing the fight—have a knowledge of war—the .real tiling. In the same way as the invaded countries have, we others can argue about the right and wrong of war; there was no argument with the French. They were not asked if they wanted war. The Germans came in and left them to buy him out of their country or fight him. And now, after nearly three years, when they have fought him out of great stretches of it, the Germ-in leaves it to them with tiieir fruit rces ring-barked, their houses blown down with grin-cot-ton in charges under the corner?, their young girls and women up to middle age carried off: and the children whom Germans have bred during their occupation, hurried off into Germany to be brought up in Heaven knows what state of orphanage to make the German recruit, classes for W35-1936. The French are noticeably more bitter than the British. It is not uncommon to see the villagers shake their lists at the "dirty Germans,'' as they call them, when German prisoners are marched down the street, and ask why prisoners ahould be taken at all. One has known a French woman to become white ami quivering with rage :\t the mere presence of a newly captured German behind the sentry in the open door of the guardroom. It is curious that the Germans are far more bitter against the British than the French. It is some of our prisoners whom they are "punishing" twice in going through villages in which the Germans before their retirement had been facing the French.

ERASING TRACES OF GERMANY. In the villages and cities which the Germanß evacuated or were expelled from in March and April this year, the French have carefully wiped out or torn down every trace of them. Three months ago Noyon was full of a busy population of German soldiers and stall' officers, and must have swarmed with notices "IJ; in forbidden to ride in this place," ''lt is forbidden to walk here," and been plastered with proclamations as Bap. aume was, demanding the handing over metals at a fixed price to be paM in' German bonds. It is hard to find a single trace of the German in Noyou to-day. His proclamations have been carefully removed from the walls or covered with French ones; his signboards have been painted out; even the names of his soldiers scrawled in pencil over street walls have been scratched off by shaving the surface of tho stouc untH tho last letter has been removed. The Germans build solid stone memorials of their regiments, and in some places—for example in Bapaume—they have had the decency or wisdom to leave the French cemeteries alone. Whan tho Germans retired early in this spring the French soldiers respected these big German memorials until they came across some of the French monuments shattered, and the graves opened and apparently robbed either for the lead in the coffins or for private pillage-. At the chateau of Mont Remind the owner was carried off into Germany as hostage, and the coffins in his family graveyard were broken open. It only needed a little of this sort of thing to raise the temper of the French troops whenever they came across some pompous Prussian monument crecte 1 in their country.

A MONUMENT OF GERMANY. The Germans seem to have treated French cemeteries and shrines as their individual fancy seized them. Often they left them untouched. The graves of German soldiers are found in most French cemeteries or in neat well kept cemeteries beside them. Unless the Germans thought they were going to be hi France for ever, ordinary prudence would make them preserve the French cemeteries as well as their own. And yet we are told of places where the hedges of trees had been cut down or dug up from the. French cemetery and planted round the German, or French gravestones taken to make a German regimental monument. There is one relic of the Germans which is being preserved with great car'ft in the village of Suzoy, near Noyon. In

the sehoolho.ise of this small French village, the Hermans had a recreation lioiisß or beer house, for their soldiers. On the ivall of the schoolroom some Herman artist—;t clever artist by his .work—has jmhfted u 'picture of the. German as seen by a Herman. Two Ccvman soldier devils are pitting holding each ii long peacock's feather, on which the Frenchman, Englishman, 'Belgian, Russian, Italian «• mi. Servian, and a psalm-singing 'Scotsman are balancing themselves precariously over the flames of hell. Nothing that was ever said or painted of the Herman,--, was ever half so -ni-.s as those two Hermans. The fat beer sodden faces and enormously swolieii bodies, ending in elephantine legs like those of some foul beast crawling in prehistoric slime, make the nvera.ue \isii.or almost sick to look at, There was never painted a more bitter cartoon of the Knltur which has ruined Germany.

ITALY. FIGHTING IN TRIPOLI. ENEMY ROUTED. HEAVY -LOSSES INFLICTED. Renter Service. Received Sept. 25, 8.30 p.m. Rome, Sept. 25. After six hours' hard lighting an Italian column on the 20th routed 7(100 enemy riflemen and 800 cavalry, with artillery and machine-guns, commanded by Huri Pasha and other Turk;,, in the Zanzur region of southern Tripoli. The enemy's losses are estimated at 1800. A quantity of material, all of German make, was captured. ENEMY ATTACK REPULSED. London, Sept. 24. An Italian official message says:—We heavily repulsed the enemy's counterattack in the Marmoluda region. Our aeroplanes dropped four tons of bombs on tirahovo railway station.