War Incidents and Developments

Auckland Star, Issue 123, 24 May 1919, Page 19

War Incidents and Developments

As revised to date, the United States i casualties in France total 240,197. The British Armies (including Dominion ] contingents, Indian Army, and garrisons I abroad) numbered 0,680,247 on Armistice j Day, the Armies of France 5,075,000, Italy 3,420,000, and the United States, 3,707.132. date had 4,500,000 troops; Austria-Hungary, at the time they went out of the war, 2.230,000, Bulgaria 500,000, and Turkey under 400,000. GERMAN TRADE UNIONISM. Despite heavy losses during the war and the prevalent turmoil, Oerman trade unionism Is to-day numerically stronger than ever. It is said to embrace for the first time In its history more than 3,000,000 persons. Twelve leading organisations alone boast of 2,309,000 members, and 47 minor societies and associations muster between them over 700,000 members. PEASANTS AS SLAVES. A new decree which has been published In Petrograd has greatly aggravated the indication of the peasantry against the Bolshevik regime. Owing to the lack of coal, peasants within twenty-four kilometres of railway lines are mobilised under I the penalty of Imprisonment and conflsca- I tion of their property, to carry wood to the railway, Ihe quantity demanded being so great that the peasants are unable to deliver it. Even those over sixty years of age are not exempt from this new decree. PAPER MILLIONAIRES. One of the certain results of war is the millionaire. Whether he is on the winning or the losing side, the contractor nourishes, and there are probably not fewer of the newly rich in Germany and Austria and Turkey than among the Allied victors. j Still there is this difference. The wealth ' I Is all on paper, and the millionaire in marks J or kronen or lira may well feel doubtful about his security. There must be many rouble millionaires in Russia who are uneasy about their next meal. GERMAN " CLAIMS " IN BELGIUM. Defeat and distress have not taught the Germans humility. Recently they had the effrontery to set up an "Indemnity Commission" of their own. This concern has has just come forward with a set of impudent "claims against the Belgian State." These consist for the most part of business debts due to the sackers of Louvain and other German subjects, dating before the war. and for property requisitioned by the Belgian authorities in 1014 from German subjects domiciled in Belgium. THE GUNNERS' HELL. The Royal Artillery is to have its own club In London, says the "Daily Chronicle." j It will be a rendezvous where the men ot the guns can meet and talk over the bad old days of the war. On the Western front the Gunners' Hell was mutually agreed to be the shell-pocked area on the right of Ypres between' Shrapnel Corner and Zillebeke. Artillery Paradise was at the southern extreme of the British line, a lovely unshelled countryside near Fort Liez; but it lost its name and reputation when it withered in the full blast of the attack of March 21. SALVING THE RIVER CLYDE. A place of 'honour in the great naval peace review, which is to be held at Spithead in the summer, should be reserved for the River Clyde, the famous ship from which the troops landed at "V" Beach, Gallipoli, in face of a murderous fire (says | a London paper). The vessel would be symbolical of the gallantry of both services. Salvage work on the River Clyde Is nowproceeding at Gallipoli, anu when refloated the vessel will oe brought to England for repairs. But the hand of the repairer should be withheld until after the review, so that the battered River Clyde can tell its own story of the historic landing. AERIAL PHOTOGRAPHY. Word of a rather startling photographic advance conies from Italy in the submission of an invention to the United States Signal Corps. With the new device it is said to be possible to take excellent pictures of enemy positions from airplanes flying at low lielght on moonlight nights. It Is also claimed that the invention can be fitted to motion-picture cameras, which would permit the photographing for the screen of much of the fighting in the air, the greater part of which takes place in the early mornIng hours. Up to the present time the chief obstacles met by daylight aerial photographers Is that the anti-aircraft guns force the flyers to take pictures from a great height, nnd much of the detail of the enemy lines is therefore lost. LUXURIES FOR TROOPS. Since the suspension of hostilities has somewhat lessened the necessity for conserving cargo space, every effort las been made to keep the men overseas supplied with all the luxuries they could purchase at home, says the official U.S. bulletin. Chewing gum is a favourite confection, as the 2,040,000 packages Teeently purchased Indicate. Orders have also been Issued by the Subsistence Division for 1,150,000 packages each of craekerjacb, fruit tablets in assorted flavours, mints, salted peanuts, salted almonds, and wafer rolls. Fancy •wafers are also in great demand, nnd 500,000 packages -were ordered, for the mouth of April. The discontinuance of all biscuit production in France made necessary n call on the Subsistence Division for 2,000,000 cartons, assorted, to be shipped by March 30, and 1,800,000 cartons for April requirements. ROCKET AS LONG-RANGE WEAPON. Dr. Robert n. Goddard, professor of physics at Clark College, U.S.A., has invented a new rocket that Is reported to be a terrible engine "of war, with an altitude range of seventy males, and a distance range of at least 200 miles. The rocket has been developed in a special laboratory at Worcester Tech., and only the armistice prevented Its being put to actual use agaiust the Germans. Tests, made by models showed that a rocket weighing thirty pounds, equipped with the Goddard system of jjropulslou, could be sent into the air far above the earth's atmosphere. The rocket is propelled by a perfected gas engine in the lower part of the shell, the explosions that generate power coming from cartridges that are fed into the chamber by a time device. The range is limited only br the amount of propelling cartridges it coirtd be fitted to carry. The rocket does not require a cannon to start it on its flight, the journey being started from any point where a man can get. The weapon feature of the rocket is in the head, where a chamber is fitted to contain either liigb. explosives or gas. >

Marriages of American soldiers in occupied Germany cannot be permitted, according to a decision of the U.S. Third Army Command. At Sheffield a German woman summoned her English husband for desertion and maintenance. It appears that the trouble arose because the husband wanted to light in the -war, and the wife did not want him to. Tie case was dismissed. MEN NURSE CAVELL HELPED. The Rev. 11. S. T. Gahan, the. British chaplain at Brussels, who administered Communion to Xurse C'uvell before her execution, speaking nt Norwich said:—"Some of the simple-hearted Tommies whom she helped to escape actually wrote postcards to her afterwards, saying that they had got safely back home. Those cards came through the Brussels post, which was then in German hands. Poor fellows, they did not know, bnt it was enough." FIRST SWEETS OF WAR. English children who never tasted sweets, having been born since the war began, are now regaling themselves with new-found delights, the sugar restrictions having been considerably modified. For nearly five years the war child has had to live in an almost sweetless world. He has had none of the customary rewards of childhood. He has had to take mrdloine barley sugar. His jamless pill has had to be swallowed heroically and in silence, for even tears could not produce a piece ot almond rock in war time. HUGE COST OF BATTLESHIPS. We may be thankful for a long time to come there will be no necessity to build ■ new Dreadnoughts, for the pree of labour j nnd material is now so high that a battleship would cost at least twice as much to construct as before the war, says a correspondent of the "Pall Mall Gazette." In 1014 we were paying £So to £90 per ton for our battleships. To-day the figure is estimated at about £180 per ton. The Queen Elizabeth cost us £2,500,000, a mere bagatelle to the bill for the Hood, a much larger ship built under war prices. By stopping work on her three sister ships, the Rodney, Anson, and Howe, the Admiralty saved the country something like £15,000,000. GERMANY'S FIRST SPARTACUS Berlin Spartacists, in the adoption of their uncouth name, need not be credited with a deep knowledge of Roman history. The name was made familiar to Germany after the only serious revolutionary epoch in their modern history by Herr Kinkel, who in 1549 started his journal, "Spartacus." He probably borrowed his title from a German poem of that name which was already popular. This ballad told the story of the Roman gladiator who in 73 B.C. gathered the noncontents of the empire together on the slopes of Vesuvius, and burst from its caves upon, the astonished capitalists, on the plain beneath. Kinkel, who popularised the now-dreaded name, is said to have been at one time a professor ol German literature in London. A TOWER COMEDY. Escaping from the Tower ot London is not, apparently, the difficult feat that it used to be; for a subaltern -who had been imprisoned there relate-1 to a Westminster court-martial how he "simply walked out." -went to the West End for a good dinner, and returned the next morning. He said he could not get in the same night, finding I the gates shut. ' "It -was not done In the Jack Sheppard kind of -way," said the officer's solicitor, "but was a 'boyish prank. Moreover, it ■was of benefit to the authorities by calling attention to the slackness there." The officer, Second-Lieutenant B. Xapier. R.A.F., pleaded guilty to escaping from the Tower, but not guilty to a charge relating to three dishonoured cheques for & total of £4, rwhlch had been cashed at the Cafe Royal. The Court's decision -will be promulgated in due course. FRENCH TELEGRAPH SCANDALS How the telegraph service of France -was operated during the war has just been repealed by an official investigation by a committee of the Chamber of Deputies appointed to inquire into war contracts. The report* shows that the Telegraphic Controls .Section, of which Mr. Tannery was the head and Captains George Xadoux and Pierre Lenolr the active members, Tvas ■responsible for scandalous abuses. Mx. Tannery, the report of the Commission declares, admitted that an average of 40,000 dispatches daily mere held up in the Paris office, and the majority of them ■were never delivered. The rest of the dispatches -were delivered only after great delay. Dispatches held up Tvcre thrown into a waste basket and destroyed -when the accumulation became too great, officers never informing senders or the addressees of what had happened to the messengers. WOMEN UNDER TERROR. The United States Senate Committee Investigating Bolshevism has listened to some horrifying facts narrated by two Americans whose testimony is unimpeachable, says the "Central News" Washington correspondent. Mr Roger E. Simmons, who was in Russia as the accredited representative ot the Department of Commerce, in the course of a detailed account of his experiences said:— ) "In Petrograd I witnessed on one occasion the undressing of a refined woman by several soldiers of the Red Guard. It was in the Xevsky Trospekt, at about C.30 p.m. I heard the screams of the woman, who had been taken into a side street, and saw the soldiers steal the clothes from her body. This was just one case, and most of the women subjected to these Indignities were women, not of the aristocracy, but of the middle class." HELIUM FOR AIRSHIPS. One misses from Major-General Seely's Parliamentary history of the great air -war any disclosure of the alleged romance of helium with which the American Press has been entertaining its public, says the London "Daily Chronicle." The romance is not the exclusive possession of States scientists. Professor Cady Home ten years ago laid the basis In a report on Kansas mineral treasures, and when the war broke out, a Bloomsbury savant, stimulated 'by Zeppelin raids, unearthed the report, which pointed to helium as a" non-inflammable gas for balloons. Our Admiralty and the American experts got on to the job. As a result of their labours the natural gas of Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas are now yielding the wonderful element: but as 70 per cent of the gas Is made up of hydrocarbons and nearly all the remainder is nitrogen there Is only some .95 left to fill the new alr«Uljjs. England awaits development*.