Into The Unknown

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XIII, Issue 285, 17 November 1923, Page 12

Into The Unknown

(To th© Editor). Sir.—The account of the rescue of our men from the Senoussi Arabs in last Saturday’s supplement, is not strictly accurate with regard to the Tara. The Tara, an armed boarding steamer of 1862 tons (ex Hibernia on the Dublin-Holyhead service) was torpedoed by the U 35, which survived the war, unlike the U 34, U 36, U 37, and others. The German captain was the famous and strangely named Arnaud de la Pierriere. who decided to take Captain Gwatkin-Williams of the Tara .0 Austria, but finally allowed him to remain with his men, when they were handed over by the U boat to the Turks nd Senoussi. Captain Gwatkin-Wil-iiams was a man of great strength and ndurance, the only one from his ship ho did not have even one day’s sickness in the nineteen weeks of captivty. In his book, “In the Hands of the 'enoussi,” he describes how he made ns escape, some fourteen weeks after ’■eing landed; and, laden at first with ■Olbs weight of food and water, cover'd some 51 miles over the desert in 36 Hours, when he was recaptured owing 0 the Arabs being unexpectedly num. ■•ous in that district, and the cover . or hiding in during the day decidedly parse. He soon became friends with 'is escort of two Turkish soldiers, and •ter on an Arab officer with blistered ’eel; got off his camel and walked, to flow the captain to ride . “There are bind hearts everywhere, but there is none more generous than the Arab, or hivalrous than the true Turk,” wrote Japtain Gwatkin-Wiliams, who makes ight of his flogging by a fanatical nriest, declaring that he “hardly felt it,” while the stones thrown by the ’’omen were “ill-aimed.” He admits hat the Arabs were frightful liars. They had told him that an armistice was on. so when the rcseueing cars ar i'’ed he thought thev came by arangement with the Turks, and was 00 late in his efforts to save the lives >f the guards, then reduced to about nine men, who were all killed, along with their women and children, the after being with them and not to b-' listinguished at a distance. The prisoners had, at times, to live on a few ounces of goat flesh, without bread, grain, vegetables or fruit of any sort; hut the Turks were cn short rations also Captain Gwatkin-Williams wa informed by his guards that the U 35 had also sunk the Chatham, th.'n in the Mediterranean. After his release he commanded a shin on the North Russian coast, describing his adventures there in a second, and much more exepensive book (which I have not seen) called “Under th© Black Ensign.” I am, etc., R.H.F.

To-day. pot a single thinker who counts upholds a mechanistic or materialistic theory of the uiverse.— Mr. J. L. Paton.