LITTLE PICTURES.

Lyttelton Times, Volume CXV, Issue 16737, 18 December 1914, Page 4

LITTLE PICTURES.

VIVID FLASHES OF WAR i. NOBLE SPIES. The “German Wireless War News” states that Count Baroldingen, of Potsdam, whose mother is an American lady, lias been awarded an Iron Cross for a daring feat which ho carried out successfully. Wearing tho raincoat of an English officer, he made his-way to the French lines, and there asked to be led to someone speaking English. Ho was taken before the Commanding Gen-. era!, and said: “I am an English ad-j jutant. When do you propose to at-! tack; from what position will you at- : tack, and what are your plans?” It was dark, and the General did not notico that beneath tho English overcoat was the uniform of a Prussian officer, and ho gave all the information that was required. The Count then returned to the German lines and com- j municated the information he had gathered to his own commander, whom he convinced as to tho truth of tho story. Tho Germans then attacked the enemy and won tho battle.

Count Schwerin, while reconnoitring, discovered that he had wandered into the French lines. Ho thereupon went up to a French officer and said in English: “Will you please help mo to reach tire British lines? I have lost my way, and am soaked to tho skin. I was obliged to change into tho clothes of a dead Prussian officer, arid am now afraid to attempt to regain tho English linos through fear of being shot.” Tho French officer was deceived by tho Count’s fluent English spoech, and rememl>ering that the French had previously shot in mistake several English officers who bore a close resemblance to Prussians, ho offered to lead the Count hack to the English lines. Count Sehweriu spurred his horse, and when his French guide discovered the mistake he had made he fired, but tho Count's horso stumbled and tho bullets passed over tho head of the Count, who returned to tho German lines uninjured. For this deed ho has been awarded an Iron Cross. •n~* IMPORTANCE OF WAR MATERIAL. Mr H. G. Wells, the novelist, is lesponsible for a statement to tho effect that all tho initial successes of Germany in this war wero successes of gear. Ho says that it is no good protending tli,at Franco was fully pro- j pared for an instant counter-stroke. I If any evidence wero needed to dispel the legend of a plot against Germany in this war, it lies in that unpreparedness. France was short of all sorts, cf material, boots, uniforms, equipment; she was unable to put great numbers of available men into the field for some weeks; it is only now that her full resources of life and courage are gotting armed into tho fighting line. ,Bv sheer good luck the CreusotSchneider gun manufacturers wero in a position to hand over to her nearly forty batteries that had been ordered | by Italy. Artillery. transport, 1 every sort of supplies, Germany was overwhelmingly at an advantage, and the groat march that came so near to Paris was far more a triumph of boots j and tyres than men. Iff A BATTLEFIELD FRIENDSHIP. Some of tho most pathetio stories of tho war deal with tho efforts of the wounded on the battlefield to. help one

another. The pathos is added to when men who wore in opposing armies, seeing each other’s suffering, respond to tho call of humanity and do their best to help one another, although unablo, owing to tho difference in language, to indicate tlieir needs or express their thanks. After a fierce engagement in the Vosges, in which many French and Gormans fell, a German soldier who had been wounded in tho thigh found himself unable to move, because a dead soldier had fallen across hint. Twenty yards away a French chasseur was sitting up and trying vainly to put a bandage round his right arm, which was bleeding profusely. The German called “ Ivamerad, and tho similarity of the French word “ Camarado ” enabled the chasseur to understand.* The Frenchman went to the assistance of the German and dragged tho corpse off him. 1 lie German bandaged his wound in tho thigh, and then helped the chasseur to bandage his arm and put it in a sling tor him Night had fallen by the time this was finished, and the two helped one another towards the high road. The Frenchman carried the German

on his baofc, and the German brushed aside branches to protect the Frenchman’s. wounded arm. When they reached llio road tho Frenchman put the German down, and after tellinv him something which tho German could not comprehend, went away. After several hours a cart laden with hay, on which some wounded were lying, came along the road. It stopped before the Gorman, and the chasseur jumped down and helped liin German “ oamarado ” to climb into tho cart.

rv. MOTORING UNDER FIRE. The Hon William Wostenra, eldest son of Lord and Lady Rossmore, who took part with tho Naval Brigades in the defence of Antwerp, has sent to his mother a long letter containing several fresh facts and a remarkably vivid’ description of tho seen© in the city just before its fall.

“ I’ve been through hell and out again,” he writes, "and none the worse, but it was through God’s help, for if anyone in. Antwerp ought to have been killed it was I. For two days I drove my car up and down the big city with enormous shells bursting all round me. No ono who was not there will ever be able to realise what the whole scene was like. Tho whole side of a house comes down, nothing to be seen but dust, and then flames and in five minutes tho whole surroundings are on fire. Can you imagine all this, and at the sarte. time thousands of men, women and children pushing along, all in a panic? “ I was tearing down ono of the boulevards at forty miles an hour—wo didn't waste much time—when thirty yards off a woman opened the. door of her house and’ came out. I just stay her, and then thero was a thunderous crash and a shell burst right at her door. Poor woman I Anyhow, she must have died at once. “ Then the time came when the town got practically deserted, except for just a few people who had trusted to their cellars. They would run out and ask mo, ‘What is the situation?’ and one tried to buck them up by saying, ‘ The English will have your city, but you had better go.’ They had such faith in us. It just all rests in one’s mincl as a nightmare spent in hell. Everything is inconceivable. The bursting of those shells was the most terrible thing on one’s nerves you can imagine. I don’t for one moment pretend that I was heroic and didn’t care. One did. They (the sholls) acted so on one’s nerves, "but I don’t mind telling my family I am rather pleased with myself, for, although I was terrified and unnerved, I stuck to it and drove backwards and forwards through that town amongst all those shells till the last moment.

“ I was in the last car to leave the town, when everyone else had gone. Someone remembered two motor-’hnses that had been left at the other end of the town, and my captain. I, and two Piccadilly ’busmen had a joy ride once more through the city, and got them. It was then dark, except for tho glow of the burning houses. All the streets had holes in them 2ft deep from the shells. The tramway wires wore all hanging down, but we got thoso ’buses and got back safe. I never went to bed for three days, and had nothing to cat all that time. Then I collapsed and fell out of my car dead done. I have lost every bit of my kit and clothing except what I’ve got on. There was no way out of that town except over one narrow pontoon bridge.” Tho writer adds that they were pursued by the Germans, and a bomb dropped close to them. He concludes: ‘‘Cheer up, be happy, boeause I’m happy myself, so happy and thankful that I feel I could cry with joy. I’m proud of what I’ve been through, and I would not have missed it for £40,000,000.”

TRICKS OF SHELLS

It is well understood that the German shells are not ineffective, as it is pretended by some. They can commit terrible ravages, though they are not so deadly as the French or English shells.' But a certain number of them are inexplicably harmless oven when they do explode. I have an authentic story from an officer who was wounded by a shell in the knee as he was crawling from one trench to another. After he was wounded ho was grazed by a second shell, which struck him on the ribs just under bis right arm. He felt the impact as if someone had elbowed him. It exploded within less than a yard of him, and yet it failed to do more tliau simply roll him over on the other side. Near the same trench, a young volunteer of only nineteen was hit by a shell in the small of the back as be was stooping down. It exploded and threw him forward, but beyond a mere temporary stunning h<j felt nothing. These stories, incredible as they may seem, I would not mention had' I not heard them from the officers and men, whose word is certainly reliable. Things like this load to the common belief m tho trenches that the majority of the German shells are harmless, aud the men have become accustomed to hearing

them explode over their heado with absolute indifference. The same officer who' told me the above story explained to me what seemed to be tho mysterious effect of a French shell of the “75,” of which there has been frequent mention, and which seemed to have the effect of asphyxiating scores of men t who remained dead in the trencheß in exactly tho position they were at the moment they were struck. He had himself frequently seen trenches evacuated by the Germans, in which groups of dead were found in life-like attitudes. In one trench he saw about twenty-fivo dead. Some were half-erect, leaning forward against tho trench; others were reclining with an arm half raised; and others again were on their knees or stooping. The secret of this was that, as the shell explodes, it spreads a thick metallic shower over the men, most or whom when struolc have the skull perforated with ft pieco of metal not larger than an'ordinary shot, which instantly paralyses the nervous centro, _ and' _ loaves them dead in tho attitude m which they were struck. It acounts also for the terror with which these sholls inspire the Germans.—(“ Daily Telegraph. )

VI. « OUR FELLOWS.” Ono is impressed with a certain amount of difficulty in writing about the merits of the troops of one’s own country as seen on Contnontal battlefields. One doesn’t want to swank about our own men —swank, if slang, is the most expressivo word I know —yet one would not record the reality of things without there being the ring of swank about the telling. I have been with seven armies in the field in various campaigns, and all experience forces me to say that we have easily the best army in the world. There is not so much to brag about in this. Why shouldn’t wo have? It would be a shame if wo didn’t have the best, army in the world, for its size. Ours is not a conscript army, and it is led, officered and generalled by the best of our race. Any horse lover, anyone whose pastime and joy it has been to have ridden to hounds in fox hunting, the sport of kings, knows well how in the struggle and strain of a long run good Arab breeding tells in the willing efforts of the horse he hugs botween his legs'; and so with the officers of our army—the breeding is thero. That is one great factor, and then when we compare the physical condition of our men with those that I have seen from Belgium, France or Germany, we see the reason for the admiration of all the people of of tho towns and villages that our troops have passed through recently—the splendid fettle and condition of our men. In the rapid mobilisation of millions of Continental troops the men aro taken from counting house, office or shop counter, or beer-drinking haunts, a considerable, portion soft, flabby, or anemic, and labour under the burden of heavy equii>ment which a great number of them are hardly able to carry, and the result is that they are very often, some infantry regiments notably, the human attachments of rifle triggers, expending a lot of ammunition hardly worth while supplying them with. Almost every man of ours that I have seen landed on tho Continent (and there is not muoh accent on tho “almost”) is a physically and muscularly fit soldier, led by officers of unquestionable valour—every man and every horse sent out is well worth the ample supply of food, fodder and ammunition that comes in adequate abundance along with them. Tho army that we have had fighting for the last seventy days hns been so equipped and so. supplied, and it is better that our comparatively small army should bo increased in this style rather than that we should rush raw ‘and inefficient recruits as food for powder.—(George Lynch in tho “Westminster.”)

VII. NO BOAT RACE IN 1915.

The London correspondent of the “Manchester Guardian” makes > the interesting statement that for the first time for over half a century therp will l)e no University boat race next year, both Oxford and Cambridge having decided that all racing shall be postponed until after the war. The South African war did not interfere with the race, but there are so few racing men at either University now that it would be impossible to get a representative crew. This will be the first occasion, the correspondent adds, since the race became an annual one in 1856 that there has been no contest. The first boat raco botween the Universities was in 1829, and the second seven years later.