A ZONE OF DEATH AND DECAY

Dominion, Volume 8, Issue 2501, 30 June 1915, Page 7

A ZONE OF DEATH AND DECAY

AS-SEEN FROM THE GERMAN SIDE. (By Telegraph.—Pres6 Association.) (Rec. June 29, 11.5 p.m.) London, June 29. Mr, Wiegand, in a message to the "Now York World" from the headquarters of Prince Rupprecht's army, near Souchez, says:—"Germany's wall of iron and blood between Arras and Ypres has been bent slightly, but not broken—not even cracked—under General Joffre's terrific battering-ram-liko attacks. General Joffre's ofiensivo is rapidly waning. It has led to a deluge of blood, but little else. To-day I looked into the veritable "Hell of Death," as the Germans call the stretch of three or four miles between Neuville and the Lorette Heights. Nowhere else has there been such-a* merciless-combat and such bloodshed, to the- square .yard. "Prince Rupprecht and General Luchow are engaged in the greatest defensive struggle of the war, holding back the French aiid'Ehglish while matters are being settled with the Russians. The General remarked that .perhaps there are ten thousand unburied or partly buried dead between the Lorette Heights. Neuville, and the Labyrinth. The smell is pestilential. Our hose has thrown creasote and quicklime on the nearest trenches, and both sides have reached an unspoken agreement to bury those nearest them at night-time.

"Words fail to portray the nature of it day and night. White eyes staring out of faces burned coal-black by the sun, piles of bodies, smoke "in places, and as the days and weeks pass they shrivel and shrink until they resemble little heaps of old clothes —silent heaps, more -weird in the moonlight than the daylight. "The General said, 'I wish those causing this war with indifference could bo put in this hell for a little while.' " [Sir. AViegand recently achieved some notoriety by "interviewing" the Pope.]