GERMAN MAN-TRAPS.

Manawatu Standard, Volume XLI, Issue 10526, 2 December 1916, Page 12

GERMAN MAN-TRAPS.

rVXXIXC TRf( KS OF AX (fXSCRU- i Pi Lot's FOE. "Clever," said the observant chaplain,! "is uo word for llio Boche when it- comes to im-lcnightly tricks. We're for ever checkmating some, now dodge and lumping new depths of hook-or-crook warfare.' Ql course, nil scruples are condemned by Claueewitz, the true Prussian "god" o! war. \Vir iiabon hein Mitloid! is the. L-boat commander's reply, m even protest from his victim—-"Wc can have no pity!" Hence the hideous passion for mantraps which marks the trail of the German in-hJI {fields from L'uncville to East African wilds. i.\i Luncvillc our fellows found fifty gallons of rum in a railway truck, and were taught a .erriblc lesson in abstinence, after tasting this loot. For the stuff had been deliberately poisoned ! HIDEOUS TRICKS. African jungle hacks wore laid with traps of really diabolic ingenuity. Hollow logs, oach containing a hive of wild bees hall j stupified I>\ smoke wore hidden in the long grass and'linked with trip-wires: An incautious touch, and wuite flags appeared in near-by trees, giving sharpshooters in wait ilie exact range. At Ihe same time the hives were automatically uncovered, and the bets loosed in blind clouds of fury upon everything that lived and moved. Among the British troop* euuifht in this amazing trap «a> a conipanv ol the Royal North Lancashire*, who at a moment's notice had both bees and "bullet to contend with. Machine gun.-. too. were trained upon the trap, and oin unfortunate n had a terrible time, being horribly stung in face and hands, as we I as temporarily blinded. One man dropped Ins weapon fairly maddened with stums, ol which over a hundred were later on ex traeted by Ihe medical officer. hj was the same in Souih-Wesi Africa, which has now ceased to exi«t as a German colony. Botha himself was almosj blown u)i by peculiar land mines, which killed one of his stall. Another of our officers. Colonel T lirennan. of the South African Irish. found ten mines laid across a roadway only eight feet wide. A little iron nin came just to°thc surface and |his passed down through ;i pipe, to rest al lasl upon a glass tube full of sulphuric acid. ■ Slight pressure broke this tube and fulminated a mass of blasting gelatne, of which there wa. enough in each charge, to kill eve-v living soul within a /one <>t a hundred 'yards. 'We had men blown to fragments' on that mad." Colonel Brennan mourns. '.'Others were blinded or deformed. One wheel of ivy own cm- just grazed a detonating pin. An eighth of an inch to the left, ant) no funeral would have been necessary for me or my companion.'' "HATE-SOUADS' " WORK.

On the Russian front these "treadmincs v have been used won serious effect in the forests of the Middle Dvina. And in the western trenches "hate-squads" _ are continually devising traps for the incautious. '•What aboui Ireland?'' suddenly appears on a board "across the way." A daredevil in our lines will lend or.! a patrol after dark 10 capture the taunt—a vastly more perilous feat than appears at first glance. For at a touch a bomb attachment shows itself with murderous crash, or a flare sails up into the skies, and a machine gun opens upon exposed men with cruel effect bfel'ore they can take cover. Even in Gallipoli our troops enscountered lhes< German tricks. The Turks laid "wolf pits" .-villi ultra-Prus-sian craft, and the same contagion of Kultur spread lo the Senussi of the Libvan desert. fn the early days of the war our enemy excavated the French and flemish roads to laj traps for our cavalry and the French. Quite apari from mining the bridges, live hundred open harrels w'ere buried in the highway between Berchem Sainte Agaihe and ib'- Grand Rigard. The surface was made to appear quite normal, with branches

. j and earth. Then, a fev decoy I'hlans or '.dragoon- wound canter along a safe line .j of road. Rotter imagined thati described , ] was the plight of pursuing cavalry ad . vancing in pursuit at the charge. i Steel effigies of dead Germans have beet: 1 found io contain living marksmen from the , .lager regiments; and the Isritis.li soldier who collects trophies in the field mus| now beware of ghastly surprises. At llooge. for example, an unfortunate Irishman stooped to pick ly a glittering helmet—and w r as blown to piece; by the bomb |,idden beneath it! Dummy figures, German flags, boxes c.F j cigar.-, and bottles of \\ in<—all those and 'similar flotsam of the tide of war are now ■ strongly (suspect, so thai our men are i extremely careful as they swoop over the ! striken Held where the Germans have »ivon 1 ground. ANYTHING AND ANYHOW. "Denuoch" was the characteristic watchI word which the Kaiser wrote in the War Album of the Vienna ( in ( oimeil. Ir menus "anyhow,"' and i- undoubtedly the keynote of Prussian method in war. (on j siiler Colonel Franeko, of Swakopmtind. who poisoned all the wollr, with arsenical sheep I dip in flagrant violation of the verv A U.L. J of civilised war. I General liothii warned tin's dastard that j "the <•;'!ipori of the German military anthor- , itics" wiio no defence for such an outrage. Other iwttcr supplies wey "thotoughh infected with disease" by [vultur's officer in charge—notably at Pforte and Ghnbib. It I was little less than miraculous that not one of our n;,'ti was poisoned, although ( "more arsenic was used in the well> than would be required to dip all the sheep in i ;he 1 'nion." J "We anticipated a war of men." says M. Alben Thomas, the French Minister of Munitions, ""and we are reduced to lighting flames, fumes and explosives." Person jal valour i- indeed of small account in , this mechanical war. Of course, when it conns lo hand grips in the trench the tier in.m goe- to the wall. But a- a deviser of n mtraps t'rhzis distinctly to be feared; j his electric wires, his foursome trous-de-loup. ! or staked pit full of water and cunningly | cone tied. | lie tntighj the Austrians all they know of "avalanche warfare." J low by shelling or exploding mine- to loose enormous mass-

Os of ice unci earth —whole forests, in fact, that sliclo down and overwhelm the Italians upon lower tracks and obliterate railroads. Then when the Germans evacuate a position it is safe to assume ii fairly bristles with' hidden death. Even the ancienl streljawed rnan-trap \\ -ss found in n<e in Serbia, where M.aekens;eu"s men hud the*c cruel engines in dense woodland paths to seize the unsuspecting. ''Do you call i| playing the l'miih''.'" one of our stall asked a captured Genuan olii"fertainly." was tli< reply—"if the frame is in win the war/' And he hinted :;r man-traps vtsily more terrible when ;it length "our back is to the wall; and the night, of despair succeeds our great bid for world-power."