"COCKCHAFERS'" DEFEAT.

WELSH AND BOASTFUL HUNS. GUARDS TAKEN BY SURPRISE. One of the most bitter blows to Germany, if she has heard the news, must be the destruction of the famous regiment of "Maikafer," or "Cockchafers," by our Welsh troops, writes Philip Gibbs. It is doubtful whether that fact is known to the German people, because even their soldiers at the front know very little of the history of the war outside their own fighting and .'fasting areas. Prisoners taken during the first week in August had never heard of the. Battle of Messines nor of their loss of the Wytschaote Ridge. It seems they do not want to know. "We take no interest in the war," some of them said when questioned about affairs on the Russian front and their opinion about the general situation. "We want the war to finish; that is all." But one young officer of another regiment burst into tears when he was told about the Cockchafers' defeat, and the prisoners of that regiment itself were downcast .and humiliated. " Never Surrender." "The Maikafer never surrender" was their watchword, but they had to surrender in hundreds to the Welsh. The Kaiser called them his brave Coburgers. In Germany the very children sang in the streets about them. And, proud of their own exploits, they had their own soldier-poets, who wrote songs about the regiment, to which they inarched through Belgium and France and Galicia. I saw one of these songs, picked up on the battlefield near Pilkem. It was written by one Paul Zimmermann, of theirs, and was printed on a leaflet sold at ten pfennings. It tells how the Cockchafers come out-, in the spring, and how the children sing when they come. They are ready for battle then, wherever it may be. The call comes for them wherever there is the hardest fighting, so the Cockchafers swarmed through Belgium and taught the French a lesson, and pressed after the wicked English, whoso that lying legend goes—used duin-dum bullets, and swept back the Russians through Galicia; and old Hindenburg calls for them every time when there are brave deeds to be done. Well, old Hindenburg will call in vain now for his Cockchafers, the Guard Fusilier Regiment of the 3rd Guards Division, for nearly 600 of them are in our hands and others lie dead upon the ground near Pilkem.