PRESAGE OF VICTORY.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LIII, Issue 16123, 11 January 1916, Page 9

PRESAGE OF VICTORY.

FRENCH FIGHTING SPIRIT. TYPICAL INCIDENT AT FRONT. The cool courage of the French soldier is dealt with by the special correspondent of the London Times in the Champagne. He says : —I was talking one day to the commander of a battery of '75's, whose guns were trying at the moment to locate a particular machine-gun, three or four miles in front, which had been making itself a nuisance to one of the front trenches. He pointed to the corner of a wood about 500 yards behind us, the range of which, he said, the German gunners had got to a nicety. It was in full view of their observer*. They could score a bull's-eye any time they liked to fire at it. Yet the men coming up to take their spell in the trenches or bringing up ammunition supplies insist on using the road past the corner as a convenient snort cut. The words were hardly out of his mouth when there was the scream of a heavy shell or shells passing over our heads. " Look,'' he said, and at the very spot, apparently right in the middle of a" group of men on horseback and on foot wh»> were coming round the corner, a tall column of brown-black smoke shot up into the air with a terrific bang. Directly afterwards twice again, at intervals of two or three minutes, the same, thing happened, and each time that the shells fell one expected to see everyone who was standing near the corner wiped out. But all that happened was that the men on foot threw themselves on their faces and tile mounted men reined in their backing horses. In a minute or two they came strolling past us on their way to their evening's work. smoking their pipes with complete unconcern, though they had just been within a. few yards of death, and they will go on going and coming by that exposed corner till they are " absolutelv crdered not to. as calmly as if they were on their way to a cafe on the boulevards. The spirit of the whole French Army is ,r : j like that. The great offensive of the end - of September was only won at a great; I price, even though the French losses were fewer in number than the 140,000 Germans whom they placed hors de combat in that ; mighty charge. But they have only one object in their cheerful hearts, to go out and win. They think as little of losses' as those few fantaesins and gunners did of the big iuo" shells that so nearly wiped them out. When people in England read in the communiques that the Butte de Tahure or any other hill or position which the Irene!) had won has been lost again there is no need for them to shake their heads and think that trifling reverses of this kind are serious. If thev could only • f,( ' the pinions they would" realise how unimportant they arc, and how little heanr.z the few individual vards of space | fur winch hundreds of lives "are given have ion the final result The main advance remain.- unaffected by then,. The thin" that, counts - that by their great end a gaLam. offensive the trench and their t p,end,d ciomal troop*, like our own men W at Loos. achieved the impossible, an( that what they have done once they can do iigain. r *-,