Notes and Comments.

Feilding Star, Volume XI, Issue 2788, 9 August 1915, Page 2

Notes and Comments.

Method in their Madness,

It is a surpriso to many people the German navy is devoting so much attention to the sinking of English and Scotch fishing fleets. The explanation may be found in the fact that tho British Admiralty lias been using trawlers as an extra arm of its service, and found them as useful in their way as even the lordly battleships. Britain's trawlers have acted as buoy scouts, and have done tremendously effective work (in pairs) in trawling for enemy submarines up and down the English Channel. A traveller just out from England tells us that when he left Homo (some six weeks ago) trawlers had accounted for no fewer than 30 submarines—not counting those which their trawling nets must have lipset and sent to the bottom of the ocean. Another manner in which trawlers have done (and iare still doing) great service is in keeping a safe fairway for the constant stream of stoamore plying without interruption between Dover and Calais. The broad-beamed boats have become tho posts of a 23-mile subma-rine-proof fence, with hugo nets stretched between them—nets beneath which no subtle submarine can dive. Is it to be wondered at that Yon Tirpitz is sending volleys of torpedoes into the innocent, stodgy-looking trawler ?

The Pen and the Sword

The whirligig of tune continues to ring in the changes. Some years ago tho whole world was stirred by an exposure by EUitor Maximilien Harden in his Berlin paper, the Zukuuft, of the dissolute and '"grafting" lives of tho Kaiser'b intimates, the courtiers and warlords of his inner circle. Editor Harden was tried, for lese majoste, sand sent to gaol. Months after this war broke out Herr Harden, who was one of the greatest supporters of the Kaiser's action, wrote in his journal: "Not as weak-willed blunderers have we undertaken the fearful risk of this war. Wo wanted it. Because we had: to wish it and could wish it. Wβ .do not stand and shall not place ourselves before tho Court of Europe. Our power shall create new law in Europe. Germany strikes. If it conquers new realms for its genius, the priesthood of all the gods will sing songs of praise to tho good war." Brave words and patriotic those. No wonder the journalist was complimented by his Kaiser and applauded by tho-warlords. But once again has it been provon that no trust should be placed in princes. To-day, only a few months after the writing of the above phrases, lie is an exile from the Fatherland—thrust over the border because, in a change of mood, he protested against some phases of German methods—particularly tho sinking of tho Lusitania. Even Herr Harden must now admit that Germany is before the Court of Europe —and of the whole world.

The Merciful Armaggedon

It was a famous -American General who declared that "war was Hell"; and it has beuii written by nearly every New Zealander and Australian that Gaba Tepe was Hell with the lid off. Much nas been written about the brutalities of modern warfare, with its terrible turpinite, its awful gas, its liquid fire., its high explosive shells, its grenades, and other deathdealing stink-pots. The cableman tells us that the military authorities, after the battle of the Marne.. wero supplied with strange stories a« to the aspect of numbers of the German unwounded corpses, it being reported that they had been found remaining upright, shouldering their rifles, and with their pipes in their mouths. A French scientist, M. Genearnqux, has now communcated to the Academy of Medicine (Paris) that the phenomena were due to the efficacy ©f the French explosives. Within a 15 yards radius or the explosion the displacement of air was so intense, that it caused a distension of the blood vessels and arteries, the bursting of these organs inducing sudden death. If there must be this wholesale slaughter of fighters, then better the merciful methods of turpinite than the tortures of German gas or the latest shell invented by an American, with its poisoned fragments, so that a man hit by one of these fragments dies in agor*y within four hours.