"A WAR OF MACHINES."

Sun (Christchurch), Volume I, Issue 236, 9 November 1914, Page 8

"A WAR OF MACHINES."

AUTOMATIC DEATH DEALERS. SUFFOCATING SHELL FUMES. [By H. Hamilton Fyfe, ' 'Daily Mail" Special Correspondent.] '' This is not a war of men. It is a war of machines." A wounded officer was speaking, and speaking bitterly, for he had seen more than half the battalion which he commanded swept down, as the tall grass falls to the mower's scythe, by the terrible mitrailleuse.

'' There is an appalling soullessness about it,'' he went on. "It is savagely inhuman. Men turn handles and death flies out 'in large bundles' " (I translate literally to give the phrase its full effect). "What this battle has been—it is all really one battle,, the Marne and the Aisne —no one can even conceive who has not seen the battlefield. Men could never kill one another by heaps, by hecatombs. They would sicken at siich wholesale slaughter. They would cry out, 'We are soldiers, not butchers. A battlefield should not be an abattoir.' Only machines ingeniously constructed to destroy men as locusts have to be destroyed when they sweep over a fertile land, only automatic death-dealers without heart or pity or remorse could carpet the earth with dead in this frightful way.'' That last phrase is surely Kipling's. Writing in a -wayside railway station on any empty packing-case, I cannot turn to a shelf and look up "Kitchener's School," where I think I could find it. But in any case the officer chose almost exactly the same words. And almost everyone I talked with in that train of wounded crawling down to the south spoke in the same horrified way. One tall cuirassier told how, after charging a mass of German infantry through and back and then through and back again there was "a wall, but, yes, monsieur, truly a wall of corpses, so that we had to jump our horses to get clear." (

Another man, a foot chasseur, described a beetroot field where the Germans lay dead, "hundreds of them, just as if they had been struck by lightning. That is how our ■' soixante-quinze' kills like 'le bon Dieu' when he is angry and flashes his wrath in the sky—zut, dead where you stand!"

"Rosalie's" Great Work,

The "soixante-quinze" is, of course, the famous French 75-millimetre (roughly three-inch) gun, of which the soldiers all speak with affection. They, have strange ways. Their artillery is alive to them. They talk of it with a personal feeling of gratitude and admiration. The bayonets, too, they have personified. One of the wounded Saphis spoke of a hand-to-hand fight (these have been rare) in which '' Rosalie'' had done great work. 11 Rosalie,'' he explained, " that is how we call our 'arme blanche.' She was christened so one evening as we marched back after using her to good effect. The steel shone rosy with bloodstains in the light of the 'couchant' (the setting sun). Rosalie, we call her" (lie patted his long, thin bayonet affectionately), "Rosalie, the terror of the 'Bodies.'" But the number that "Rosalie" accounts for is very small against the masses who are "automatically" destroyed. On the German side it is the mitrailleuse, the Maxim gun, which does most damage; on the French side, the "soixante-quinze." Several doctors told me that the wounds of the Germans are for the most part far more disastrous than those of the French and English soldiers. "The French shells burst with terrific effect. They tear legs and arms ta pieces. If they wound head or stomach, all is over.- It is quite true, too" (this in answer to a query of mine), "that many men are found dead without any wound on them. We find them, as we go over the fields of battle, kneeling or sitting in trenches in natural attitudes just as if they were still alive, just as they knelt or sat when the shell burst and in an instant suffocated them with its melinite fumes. "Ah! the battlefield of the Marne! Never has any war seen, anything approaching it in horror. ' The only consolation is that the German dead are far, far more numerous than ours. But even so, even though they are our enemies, and barbarous enemies, how can one reconcile sueh sights with civilisaation, with ' Christianity? If these bodies so thickly strewn were bodies of animals we would feel sorry. But men, monsieur, men! Never has the like been seen since the world began.'' That sounds like exaggeration. Some of you may incline to think it not faxremoved from hysteria. You may say, '' These men have never seen battlefields before."

A Fearful Memory. Well, here is the testimony of one who has seen other battlefields, who saw those of the Balkan War, in which losses were reckoned up to figures then unheard of. A Red Cross nurse speaks —a clever, businesslike Frenchwoman who has been picked out for several jobs requiring special qualities of levelheadedness: "Affreux!" (fearful) she says: " Affreux, affreux! " and shuts her eyes tight for a moment to blot out the sights that memory brings before them. '' Think of the numbers—two millions. That has never been equalled. Think of the precision of the machinery for killing I And the number of machines! And the enormous amount of ammunition which they use! Germany must be one vast hospital. France is beginning to be the same." I have seen that for myself. I have just travelled from the Atlantic coast right up through the centre of Fiance, and wounded are everywhere. Already beds are becoming scarce, though fortunately there are so many slightly,

that is cleanly, injured that they roi cover quickly and make room for newcomers. But it brings home the immensity of the struggle to see every available school, institution, and public hall turned into a hospital, as well as every big railway station and numberless private houses, and then to reniember that in Germany it is far worse. Almost everywhere there are scattered among the French a few English wounded. . This nurse in the train said she had them in one hospital in alternate beds. "They make friends at once and insist on changing caps,'' she said, laughing. *' They exchange everything. I have even seen a Highlander change his petticoat—how do you call it? —-his kilt, for a pair of red trousers. The long journeys astonish your soldiers. They say, 'We did not know France was so big.' Brave English Nurses.

"The bravery of your English nurses is magnificent. They go into the firing line without fear, and attend to the wounded with bullets and shells falling all round them. Two were killed in this way, attending to German wounded —think of that! But not so bad as the French doctor I know who was actually killed by the German whose wound he went to bind up." "Is it true," I asked, "that the German wounded and- prisoners are all hungry?" (I had my doubts about the stories that they had been reduced to wolfing raw beetroot with lumps of earth sticking to it, and even to eating hay.)

"It is, so far as my experience goes,'' she answered. " Something must have gone wrong with their supply trains. The first thing the wounded ask us for is 'something to eat.' Many of them have told us that they are lucky to have been picked up by the French, since in many places the Germans have killed their own wounded. It sounds unlikely," she went on, seel n n* mu Sedulous, "but who can <<t> y But what ignorant boors compared to our soldiers, and to yours also! They ave no education. It is no wonder they commit atrocities, when they are encouraged by their more brutal officers. They ar ® ®l°ds, more like animals than men." The stories of the long battle which the men told—wearing German helmets or fur nats many of them; nursing their wound--8 • * ee i' or stroking arms which throbbed with fever, or resting bandaged heads against carriage windows—were bewildering in their garrulous abundance of detail. Out of them all one or two stand out.

There is a story of a motor-car convoy which charged a couple of troops of German dragoons. Out-.of a wood the troopera rode and began firing on- the cars, summoning them to stop. The driver of the first—he seems to have taken the direction of the fight—opened out full speed, and before the dragoons realised-it the cars, were going through them at about 50 miles an hour. There was a tremendous, bumping about, many were unhorsed, several horses ran away, two or three poor brutes had their legs broken. Fortunately not one fell before the leading car, or the charge would have been stopped. As they charged the motor-car men fired, but did not do great damage. It was a great thing, though, to get clear away. Another tale with a serio-comic flavour to it is the tale of five German infantrymen who lost their regiment in a rapid retreat from a position and hid under haycocks. The pursuing French fell over one of them. He instantly threw up his hands and then began to talk volubly in German, of which the French "could riot understand a word. He pointed to the haycocks, though, and that gave a sergeant some idea of what he meant. He ordered his men to aim at the haycocks, and went towards- them himself with a revolver. Then, "just like a scene in a play," out crawled the other four Germans and surrendered. Enemy Difficult to See.

The difficulty of seeing the enemy is what almost all the wounded insist upon. That adds to the inhumanity of this war of machines. Hundreds, even thousands, of men have been killed without setting eyes on the troops opposed to them. And another thing. All attribute the greatest "bag" to the mitrailleuse. A very sensible British infantryman with a bullet through his hand said the German gunners' aim was good (contrary to the French belief), but that their shells often did not explode. "When they do," he said, "they spit out all kinds of merchandise —4in. bolts among other tilings.'' The German howitzer, of which so much was expected before the war, did not, according to this man, compare with the British. ' 1 They don't seem to be able to handle it at all against aeroplanes. Ours get them time after time. One shot to give wanning, then another 1 trial bull,' then No. 3, and up goes the number, down comes the plane. But it's the Maxims that do the most damage." Clearly our new Army, which is being trained now, should be very largely a Maxim-gun force. Not only do these drive, holes into the ranks, but they give courage and confidence to the troops upon whose side they are. Our men are better than Germans* General French says so. We know it. But this is not a war of men. It is a war of machines. Our machines must be at least as good as theirs and not less numerous.. Afterwards we most set about making slaughter on this vast scale impossible. But now our business is killing. We must have plenty of the best killing machines.

BELGIUM WEEK. SATURDAY'S COLLECTIONS. OTHER ASSISTANCE. The activities of the Boy Scouts in collecting funds for the sufferers by the war in 'Belgium were continued throughout Saturday with good results. ORCHESTRAL CONCERT. Last night a concert for the same purpose was given by the Chnstchurch Orchestral Society in the Colosseum. There was a large attendance, the hall being so packed that hundreds had to be turned away. It is expected that the collection taken at the doors will realise about £SO. The concert, from a musical standpoint, was in every way a success, and was received with enthusiasm. During the interval, the Mayor, in the course of a short address, thanked the citizens for supporting the concert so heartily. He thanked the Christchurch Orchestral Society for providing the concert, and said special credit was due to Mr Ernest Jamieson, secretary of the Society, who had worked indefatigably to complete the nrrangements in the very short time available.

The work of preparing the stage for the concert and of making other arrangements in connection therewith was carried out by a band of enthusiastic helpers. Mr F. C. Raphael was particularly helpful to the committee. The Mayor wishes to thank the proprietors of the Colosseum for their kind action in giving the use of the building for free of charge. Mr Jamieson, who organised the concert, desires

to thank John Puller and Sons, the New Zealand Picture Supplies, Ltd., the manager of the Opera House, the caretakers of the Theatre Royal and the Colosseum, Messrs C. E. Otley and Sons, and members of the Orchestral Society, for their assistance in various ways. COLLECTION TO-MORROW. The second collection will be taken up to-morrow, and the committee will be glad of the services of girls and ladies to undertake the work. Those willing to assist are invited to leave their names with Mrs Rolleston (Dominion Buildings) any time to-day. They will then be supplied with boxes, and allotted stations for the following day. MR SEAGER'S LECTURE. The patriotic illustrated lecture entitled "The Nation's Story, as told by Memorials of Westminster," which was to have been giv.en in the Canterbury College Hall by Mr S. Hurst Seager, in aid of the Britain and Belgium Relief Fund, and which was unavoidably postponed, will be given in the Choral Hall on Saturday, November 28. Music will be given by the Cathedral choir, tinder Dr. Bradshaw. ■ ART UNION. The. following additional gifts have been received towards the Britain and Belgium Fund Art Union: —Mrs Hobday Japanese screen; Mrs Daniel, picture; Mrs Nicholls, picture; Miss Waller, picture;, and Mr W. H.. ija,rgxea,yes„ ten Volumes of Royal -Academy pictures. The prizes are on view daily at Mr Charles Clark's auction rooms, Hereford Street. Tickets, one shilling each, may be obtained at Mr Clark's office, or from Mr Mawson Stewart, honorary secretary.