SEND ALL MEN.

Taranaki Daily News, 13 May 1918, Page 2

SEND ALL MEN.

1 AUSTRALIAN'S URGENT APPEAL. ENEMY'S HUMAN TIDAL WAVES The following extracts, dealing with the German human tidal waves, are taken from an observer's letter, dated January 18, to his father, a well-known proj fessional man in Perth, Western Australia:— "We are certainly watching Fritz rehearse his huge army on a very extended front of many miles, in which quite j 1,000,000 men are engaged. His massed ! formation in advance will form a human tidal wave, and we will much resemble a post-and-rail fence, trying to keep back a flying wheat field. "Retire' will be our only move, and God knows what will be the loss in material alone, and in men we will suffer, for, under pressure, such as is evident with his enois mous pow«r, many will fall by exhaustion, for he uses a system of reinforcement by retiring his wearied men in shifts. The new divisions march through the retiring men. In the air he is fast developing a great fleet, and there are some game men amongst his fliers. Fully recognising that he must have tunnelled many miles to smother his reserves, we watched carefully the face of a huge tableland, which for months was covered in snow. At last a manhole appeared in the face of it, and we sent six scouts to watch that hole night and day. They flew past like swallows over a pond. Early one morning that hole war enlarged, and out at the double, ten deep, fled Fritz. Well, we had laid a big gun on that hole, and fired two shells. I flew over an hour later, and the once tableland resembled the bed of a very deep dry creek. Boliver remarked: A very cheap grave for Fritz.'

"If he advances his men in massed formation we won't kill them in hundreds or thousands, but more likely at per acre. Our boys .are all ready and itching for a scrap, but they don't what they have to face this time. All are pleased at the idea of his advance, but one and all recognise how short of men we really are, which is partly due to the excessive length of our line, which is being daily stretched without any excess of arrivals. Further we can't tiring up reserves at the same pace as Fritz, for his wonderful mobilisation gets us thinking. Where they come from, and how he gets them up, we cannot yet fathom. All we recognise is that he does it, and carries them by rail, which I have known him to lay down at the rate of fourteen miles in a night. Send all the men in Australia that carry arms in every walk of life. Sweep them up, for we are too short of men. I personally dread the day that Fritz's human tidal wave strikes us.'