"THE DEATH WHISTLE."

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume LXIX, Issue LXIX, 27 May 1915, Page 2

"THE DEATH WHISTLE."

A HORRIBLE ACCUSATION. Writing on April 9, the special London correspondent^ of the Auckland Star says: ~'■■■.. . : '■■•'••.■• ' We .have been regaled with many more or less authentic repjorts concerning the callous manner in which the German*, filfeat even their own wounded, but io has been left for M. Alexander Guchkov, an ex-Eresident of the Russian Duma, who is now at the head of the Russian Red Cress organisation on the German frontier, to accuse the enemy of the systematic and cold-blood-ed murder of soldiers whose wounds are of such al, character as-to render them of no further value as part of the.war machine. Mr^VicVbr^Mafsdeh etates that M. Guchkov has in his possession a little piece of nlechanism provided by the German Government for the military hospital officials and xised by them on the field to give the "happy dispatch" to men whose injuries seem eiy to result in permanent incapaeitation from a military point of view. It isj nominally, a special form of whistle vith which the hospital orderlies who inspect the fields of battle are supposed to summon extra aid when needed, and is thus described by Mr Marsden : About five inches long, it looks like' a rounded bit of wood shaped to fit the grasp. From one end protrudes I the whistle, which really is a steel tube looking more like a small bore revolver when viewed end on.. At the other end of the wooden grip is a small crpsspiece round which a couple of fingers can conveniently hook. A very curious whistle, and of no particular value as such. But grip the wooden handle, and catch a couple of fingers in the crosspiece, and pull apart, and you find something working like a squirt. But it is not a squirt, not even for vitrol, the latest Germanic war-weapon; that peculiar invention of the fiend is worked by compressed air. This "whistle" for hospital orderlies is a miniature single-shot pistol. The whistle part runs solid through the handle and beyond; when the cross-piece is pulled out like a piston it reveals a slot, into which a ball-cartridge is slipped. There is a strong spiral spring in the upper part, against which you pull to expose the loading slot. This spring also serves the firing pin. The hospital men of the German 'army, having satisfied themselves that a given German soldier lying helpless od the fields is of no further use to the State as a part of the fighting maeh'ine, applies the innocent-looking "whistle" to temple or heart or- other vital spots, which even the elementary knowledge of a hospital orderly # does not permit him to mistake. There is practically no noise, and the work is always done at night. The German soldier is not a man, only a part of the war machine, and his value when "outed" is that of the useless horse, namely, the skin he wears. Whether the hapless soldier might recover and live out an average lifetime minus a limb or two is of no importance; this partieualr bit of mechanism of the war machine is no further use for war and is "scrapped" on the spot, libe the badly-wounded horse. So the German soldier's, value is not the life that is still in him, but the uniform he wears, which may serve for another bit of newly-impressed mechanism. It 'is | quite a small thing this "whistle," but. as Mr Marsden remarks, it explains many things. It reveals to us the inward meaning of reports we have read of a moaning roomful of wounded German soldiers suddenly becoming dead silent on the appearance of one of their i own officers. It explains why the Russians, when they finally took Prasnish. found German w.ounded hidden away as far as the poor wretches could crawl, in attics and cellars and styes and , barns, anywhere to escape the eye of their butchers—not the enemy, but the secret butctrers ap-nointed to' the German army by the German Goverment. with special weapons devised and made for the ends of war as understood by the .German's.