INSIDE WAR STORIES

Auckland Star, Volume LXV, Issue 267, 10 November 1934, Page 6 (Supplement)

INSIDE WAR STORIES

Nearly sixteen years after it ended, the World War still contributes to the day's news. Almost every week something which was secret or known only to few -when it happened becomes known at last to the many. A few weeks ago a French military court tried a belated claim for "rehabilitation" on behalf of a corporal and three men who were condemned to death and shot after their company had refused to join in an attack in the St. Mihiel sector in August, 1915; and so the many heard for the first time of the remnant of a company which, having distinguished itself once, had been sent in to attack again and again, and had finally refused to leave its trench, being so exhausted that "they would sooner have been shot where they stood than go over the top again." In the same week the London "Evening Standard" discovered that the Royal Bank of Scotland was still holding funds with which to cash the Scottish notes used in paying the men of Beatty's hattle cruiser squadron at Rosyth on the night before tho battle of Jutland in May, 1910 —although thousands of these notes have been lying at the bottom of the North Sea ever since the battle. Also in the same week, Harmer Rooke and Co., London stamp auctioneers, catalogued one of their sale lots as "Gonnany, 10 pf. carmine, 15 pf. violet, the two forgeries made by the British Government in unused blocks of four." What untold tale of the British Secret Service lies behind this chance revelation that German postage stamps •were forged in London during the war? Consorships Constant. Europe has known censorships before and knows them still, although normally they are less open and less stringent in time of peace. They did not, of course, account for all the suppressions and distortions of the war. Nevertheless, their effect was stifling enough to throw an immense sense of relief into the cry of, "Now it can be told!" And how much there was to be told when the war ended! And how much there is still to be told!

The cry of "Now it can be told-" leads to the one conclusion, that wars are impossible without lies. The damage that wars do is moral as well as physical. Men will not fight unices they are -whipped into a passion, and for this the sober truth is not enough. Hence we have the whole structure of propaganda lies, which constitute a terrible indictment, not of this or that warring country, but of war itself. Atrocity lies flourished everywhere.

In military matters it was more difficult to keep a secret. Events which befell thousands of men at the front were gossiped about at the base and were taken home by men on leave. It was easy enough to keep them out of the papers, but less easy to keep them from circulating in rumours among, civilian populations eager for every scrap of news from the front. Everybody knew that when the Tiger came into office in France, late in 1917, all was not well with the French; but the full extent of the mutiny in the French. Army, following Nivelle's disastrous spring offensive in the Champagne, was never known to the many until long after the •war.

We know now that 115 units in the French Army were affected and that all that stopped it were the wholesale executions which followed the raising of the red flag by a regiment at the Coeuvres depot. For that one day's mutiny one mutineer out of every five was chosen by lot for execution. Of the hundreds of men who thus died at the hands of their own countrymen, practically every man faced his end as if it no longer mattered to him whether he died at a French firing post or on Gerjnan barbed wire. Incidentally, there is a curious sidelight on the French poilu which is worth recalling in this connection, in the fact that long after the Tiger had come in and the French had been pulled out of defeat and were being driven to victory, indeed right to the end of the war, French troops could be heard going up to the line singing the " Internationale," the song of the mutiny. Episodes Still Unexplained. We still do not know the exact number of mutineers executed, but we know vastly more than we were ever allowed to know during the war. After 10 years of revelations, the stream of revelation is still flowing. The mass of now material which is now available on all phases of the war is almost mountainous in its proportions. But even now there are episodes which have not had the light-bath which one day they may receive. To take a mere handful of such episodes at random: We should like to know morp of the mission on which the Emperor Charles of Austria sent Prince Sixte of Bourbon on his secret round of the allied capitals in 1917. We know that the Prince was secretly summoned from Belgium to Vienna, where the Emperor gave him an outline of Austria's terms for an immediate peace. We have been told that his mission was wrecked on Baron Sonnino's veto. Some day we may know more about that. We should like to know more about the appalling train wreck at Modane in 1917. It was rumoured in France that between SOO and 1200 poilus—the estimates have always varied —were killed while returning to France on leave from the Italian front. The story which has always been current is that the military authorities at Modane, on the FrancoItalian frontier, refused to listen to the locomotive engineer who warned them that it was usual to employ a second locomotive, acting as a brake at the rear of the train, when descending from the Mont Cenis tunnel. The gossip has always been that the military authorities told the engineer to mind his own business and proceed. Result: Something like 1000 men killed in less than half a minute. A Submarine's Exploit. We should like to know more about the spy services of all the warring countries. For example: The British submarine E3;> was lying in the dockyard at Gibraltar one Sunday night in the spring of 191 S. On Monday morning slip had disappeared, nobody knew where; On the following Saturday she k was bank again. Nobotlv knew where

SECRETS UNREVEALED

Atrocity Lies and Spies--Germany's Last Few Days

she had come from, for it is not etiquette to ask questions in naval dockyards when there is a war on. However, the facts were these: She went out to a given position in the open Atlantic, about 150 miles off the coast of Portugal, to wait for a new German cruiser submarine which, she was told, would pass her position at eight o'clock on the following Friday morning. At 8.22 on the Friday she picked up the German with her periscope. He was then running on the surface, with all his crew enjoying a smoke on deck.

At 9.18 o'clock she gave him one torpedo under his forward gun, and before the survivors had had time to come down out of the air she , gave him a second torpedo under hie after gun. Then she returned to Gibraltar. And how did she know that a big new German cruiser submarine would pass a given position at a given time on its maiden voyage from Germany to the vicinity of the Azores? Presumably because it was in the orders that came to her commander from the Admiralty. And how did the know ? But perhaps the remarkable feats of the spy service are one aspect of the war of which we shall never be told. The Closing Scenes. We should like to know more of the actual manoeuvres in Germany between the generals and the politicians, by which the Kaiser's abdication was brought about and the armistice accepted. Wβ know from the memoirs of tho German Socialist leader Schncidemann how the politicians called in tho generals and asked for a report on tho rapidity with which Amerieaii forces were being landed in France. "An average of 250,000 a month," was the reply, as Schneidcmann tells the story. "How strong will the American Army be next spring?" "The American military leaders count on having 2,300,000 men by spring?" "And they have the corresponding equipment?" "If they continue at the present rate they will have. The Americans have always heen accurate in their estimates."

Ludendorff broke in: "Before we accept these armistice conditions, we ought to say to tho enemy, 'Fight for them.'" "But when they have won them by fighting, won't 'they impose worse terms?" asked Prince Max of Baden.^ "There are no worse terms," said Ludendorff. "Oh, yes," said Prince Max. "They would break through into Germany and devastate the country-" We know.of the stern references to "military overlords" and "autocrats"' which came from Woodrow Wilson, and we know, that it was Wilson and the German Socialists who squeezed out the Kaiser. But of those last few days in Germany, as the titanic drama crashed to'its end, there is much that we should like to know which so far has been withheld from us. Perhaps the whole story will never be revealed during the ex-Kaiser's lifetime. —Clair Price in the New York "Times."