Current Topics

New Zealand Tablet, 8 April 1915, Page 21

Current Topics

V Pasteur: A Contrast r . H. Houston Peckham contributes to the Survey ', % some lines which, finely bring out the contrast between ■■:? the gospel of frightfulness ' and the gospel of helpfulness, between tne raucous roarings of materialistic 'culture ' of our Nietzschean ' supermen ' and the quiet tones and gentle and beneficent work of true science. They are dedicated to that greatest of our scientists and humble follower of —Pasteur. He led no legions forth to maim and kill; He burned no city, scarred no fertile farm With trampling. Nay, he never knew the thrill Of throbbing drum, of fife, of trump's alarm. In finding how to lengthen our short days, In easing human pain, he spent his time Therefore, proud Clio gives him feeble praise, And bards neglect him as a theme for rhyme. But God, Who smiles with scornful pity down On all our foolish ways, knew well his worth, And crowned him with a brightlier shining crown Than all the regal diadems of earth. , Bonaparte! Charlemagne!—Oh, what were these Beside this doughty conqueror of disease ? How the Secret Was Kept The surprise of the war, so far, in the matter of armament has of course been the appearance of the 42 centimetre or 16.1-inch siege howitzer, nicknamed the ' Jack Johnson,' which wrought such havoc at Liege and Namur; and Germany has gained considerable kudos for her success in keeping the great secret. The achievement, however, was not so great as might at first sight be imagined. The matter is briefly referred to ,by Mr A. Hilliard Atteridge in las recent volume, The (,'<rin(i/i Army in War; and he gives us the comforting explanation that the main reason why the secret has been so successfully kept is that Germany has so very few of the- monsters. Says Mr Atteridge: 'ln the same way there can be little secrecy about armaments. The Germans managed to keep secret the fact that they possessed an exceptionally powerful weapon in the new howitzer. But such secrets are very rare. The mere fact that most improvements in armaments are at least alluded to in the army estimates of the country, and become the subject of discussion in the technical press, generally gives an early clue to any change that is being made. The French tried to keep secret the details of the Lebel rifle and of the new quickfiring gun, but any weapon that has to be multiplied by hundreds and thousands in actual use is soon known to multitudes of people, and even casual talk about it soon gives any practical mechanic an idea of what its construction must be. The Germans were able to keep the secret of their big howitzer because they had very few of them. If the peace had been prolonged for a couple of years more it probably would have been fully described in half the military reviews in Europe.' According to Mr Attendee's authorities, there are not altogether more than eight of these guns with the German army. To Break the Stalemate 'Situation unchanged has, in effect, been ' the report from most portions of the Western front for a I long time, and both sides have obviouslv been doing little more than mark time. Neither side is making anv rea,Uy notable progress. How is this condition of stalemate to be broken ? Most people anticipate that a general advance will be the means employed: but if reliance is to be nlaced oil this move alone it is manifest that a general a.dvance along a fortified front nearly three hundred and fifty miles long will involve enormous sacrifices. A writer in the London Spectator hints very

plainly that by a judicious use of the British command of the sea a new determining 1 factor will be introduced presumably in- the shape of a landing of British troops on enemy soil. If the Spectator-is semi-inspired or well formed, and such a move is really in contemplation, the statement opens up an extremely interesting situation. Here is how the London paper'outlines the possibilities and probabilities of the position One has only to look at the German coastline from Memel to Flensburg in the Baltic, or from Ribe to Emden on ■the North Sea, to realise how great are the opportunities offered to those who not only command the sea, but also have plenty of transports and plenty of men to put into them. We shall be betraying no secret to the enemy when, we note that within a comparatively short time our new army,' not counting our Territorials, will approach a million trained men, that Prance has notoriously not used anything like her whole army in the trenches between Belfort and Nieuport, and that Russia, again, has more men than she can employ upon her battle front, enormous as it is. If we once secure complete command of the sea owing to the Germans having played their invasion card and lost, it is obvious that we and our allies shall be able to afford the -world some very interesting examples of how great a military and land weapon lies implicit in sea power. This, however, we admit, is dreaming. The German Battle Fleet has not yet been destroyed, and perhaps will not be, for it may be that, in spite of the German desire for invasion, more conservative counsels will prevail. But even if they do, and if we are still hampered by the Fleet in being at Wilhelmshaven and Kiel, it must be remembered that we shall still possess, though not in so great a degree, a power of introducing a newfactor into the war which will put an end to the condition of stalemate. By the spring we and the French alone shall have ready a force of two million men of first-rate quality not immediately required elsewhere that is, not immediately required in the great defensive line from the Alps to the mouth of the Schelde. If we cannot contrive a use for these men which will break down the condition of stalemate, our strategy will indeed be bankrupt, and we shall deserve to become a race of permanent- troglodytes. That our, troops can and will be quite willing to "stick it out" in the trenches till June we do not doubt, but by the time the water-lilies are springing up in the ditches in Flanders we ought to be able to give them the opportunity to stretch their legs once more, and to reconvert fortress troops into marching units.' The Faithful Horse A new Church of England Litany, for special use during the war, has recently been prepared and it contains a prayer for the animals and speaks of them as ' offering their guileless lives.' Some of the bishops—notably Dr. Gore, Bishop of Oxford—have objected, on the ground that it has never been the custom of Christians to pray for any other beings than those whom wo think of as rational. We have not the exact - terms of the Litany before us, and are therefore unable to express an opinion as to the propriety of this particular petition ; but we are safe in saying that the horses and dogs being used in the war are as brave, faithful, and devoted as any soldiers, and that no Christian need feel ashamed of asking the Father of All to have them in His keeping. Many touching instances of animal fidelity are being recorded in the war columns of the English press. Here are a couple of specimen narratives. ' One man of the ■ th Lancers I found lying on his back with his eyes staring at the skies. He was dead, without doubt. Standing over him was his horse, without a. wound. It was looking into his face every few minutes, and then neighing in a pitiful way that sounded just like a human being in an excess of grief. To hear that popr animal was enough to bring tears to the eyes of the most hardened of men,' writes LanceCorporal J. Stilton. * A Welshman, a driver in the Royal Field Artillery, told the following simple story about his horses in the

war. : It is an incident of 'the never-to-be-forgotten retreat from Mons : ' I had driven them for three years. I tell you I could talk to them just as I am talking to you. There was not a word I said that they did not understand. And they could answer me—-they could, indeed. I was never once at a loss to know what they meant. When I was astride one of them, why, I had only to think what I wanted him to do, and he would do it without being told. Early in the retreat from Mons a shell crashed right into the midst of the section with which I was moving. A driver in front of me was blown to bits. My gun was wrecked. I was ordered to help with another. As I mounted the fresh horse to continue the retreat I saw my two horses struggling and kicking on the ground to free themselves. I could not go back to them. I tell you it hurt me. Suddenly a French chasseur dashed up to them, cut the traces, and set them at liberty. I was a good way ahead by that time, but I kept looking back at them, and I could tell that they saw me directly they were on their feet. Those horses followed me for four days. We stopped for hardly five minutes, and I could not get back to them. There was no work for them, but they kept their places in the line like trained soldiers. They were following me to the very end, and the thought occurred a thousand times: "What do they think of me on another horse?" Whenever I looked there they were in the line, watching me so anxiously and sorrowfully as to make me feel guilty of deserting them. Whenever the word "Halt!" ran down the column I held up my hand to them, and they saw it every time. They stopped instantly. Whether they got anything to eat I do not know. I wonder whether they dropped out from sheer exhaustion—l hope to heaven it was not that. At any rate, one morning when the retreat was all but over, I missed them. I suppose I shall never see them again. That's the sort of thing that hurts a soldier in war.' * How much these sufferings hurt a soldier, and how close a bond of sympathy and affection springs up between rider and horse who have so often faced suffering and death together is well illustrated in a most touching passage in the late General Butler's fascinating work, The Great Lone Land. It is a description of the death of the General's favorite horse, Blackie, when the party were attempting to cross the frozen river Saskatchewan; and it shows that the great Irish soldier was as considerate and tender-hearted as he was brave. •' It froze hard that night, and in the morning the great river had its waters altogether hidden opposite our camp by a covering of ice. Would it bear? that was the question. We went on it early, testing with axe and sharp-pointed poles. In places it was very thin, but in other parts it rang hard and solid to the blows. The dangerous spot, was in the very centre of the river, where the water had shown through in round holes on the previous day, but we hoped to avoid these bar] places by taking a slanting course across the channel. After walking backwards and forwards several times, we determined to try'a light horse. He was led out with a long piece of rope attached to his neck. In the centre of the stream the ice seemed to bend slight Iv as he passed over it, but no break occurred, and in safety we reached the opposite side. Now came Blackie's turn. Somehow or other I felt uncomfortable about it, and remarked that the horse ought to have his shoes removed before the attempt was made. My companion, however, demurred, and his experience in these matters had extended over so many years, that I was foolishly induced to allow him to proceed as-he thought fit, even against my better judgment. Blackie was taken out, led as before, tied by a long line. I followed close behind him, to drive him if necessarv. He did not need much driving, but took the ice quite readily. We had got to the centre of the river, when the surface suddenly bent downwards, and, to mv horror, the poor horse plunged deep into black, quick-running water! He was not three yards in front of me when the ice broke. I recoiled involuntarily from the black, seething chasm; the horse, though he plunged suddenly

down, never let his head under water, but kept swimming manfully round and round the narrow holej trying • all he could to get upon the ice. All his efforts were; useless; a cruel wall of sharp ice struck his knees as he tried to lift them on the surface, and the current, • running with immense velocity, repeatedly carried him , back underneath. As soon as the horse had broken through, the man who held the rope let it go, and the leather line flew back about poor Blackie's head, I got up almost to the edge of the .hole, and, stretching out, took hold of the line again; but that could do no good nor give him any assistance in his'struggles. I shall never forget the way the poor brute looked at me —even now, as I write these lines, the whole scene comes back in memory with all the vividness of a picture, and I feel again the horrible sensation of being. utterly unable, though almost within touching distance, to give him help in his dire extremity—and if everdumb animal spoke with unutterable eloquence, that horse called to me in his agony ; he turned to me as to one from whom he had a right to expect assistance. I could not stand the scene any longer. "Is -there no help for him?" I cried to the other men. "None whatever," was the reply; "the ice is dangerous all around." Then I rushed back to the shore and up to the camp where my rifle lay, then back again to the fatal spot where the poor beast still struggled against his fate. As I raised the rifle he looked at.me so imploringly that my hand trembled and shook. Another instant, and the deadly bullet crashed through his head, and, with one look never to be forgotten, he went down under the cold unpitying ice.' ■x- ' It may have been very foolish, perhaps, for poor Blackie was only a horse, but. for all that 1 went back to camp, and, sitting down in the snow, cried like a.. child. With my own hand I had taken my poor friend's life : but- if there should exist somewhere in the regions of space that happy Indian paradise where horses are never hungry and never tired, Blackie, at least, will forgive the hand that sent him there, if lie can but see the heart that long regretted him.'