NOTES AND COMMENTS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LIII, Issue 16337, 18 September 1916, Page 4

NOTES AND COMMENTS.

AEROPLANES AND INFANTRY. The reference made by Sir Douglas Haig to armpured cars and . aeroplanes assisting in the latest , British : advance show*, the novel means that are being utilised by the allied commanders 'to ■ break through the enemy's defences. This ;is not the first time aeroplanes have .assisted- an infantry attack. The French used - them ; from the very commencement of their'Sommo offensive. I A fleet of aeroplanes, \ frying' low, went forward -with' thoinfantry .'('marking ; their every movement and signalling it to the rear. As a rule'aviator and; infantry- ■ man' move lin widely, sundered worlds, separated by thousands of feet of air. The infantryman on the ground below watches the duel of French ■ and German airmen very far away. In the great offensive for the first time aviators and infantry went into the -battle close together, and each infantryman felt that he was in immediate communication with the aeroplane above his head. Many a soldier, he paused for a breathing space, 'waved his hand approvingly to the aviator, who was watching him from above. The aeroplanes were only 500 ft or 600 ft up, and it was their duty to warn the French batteries behind as to the progress made, so that the men should not suffer from tho fire of their own guns. The progress of each unit was announced to the aviator above by signals. The kite balloons that were watching the battle from the rear were often at a loss as to the position of the advancing lines,/ but the airmen never made a mistake. To the inexpressible joy of the infantry the French shells fell exactly where they were needed, just ahead of their lines, and moved steadily forward with their progress. The aeroplanes received plenty of bullets and shrapnel in their planes, but not a single one was brought down. TRENTINO FIGHTING. The Italians are still holding fast and making occasional slight gains on both fronts. In the Upper Trentino tho Austrians appear to be loth to leave the important position of. Mount Cauriol, tho crest of which was recently secured by the Italians. The enemy is still clinging desporately to the northern slopes, apparently in the. hope of regaining the crest. Tho difficult conditions under which both sides are fighting in the Trentino arc described in an article by an American journalist,-published in Land and Water, and entitled "The Roof of Armageddon." The particular section of tho Trentino' front visited by the writer is situated in about the same latitude as Mount Cauriol, but is nearly 50 miles to the westward of it. "The Adamello," he writes, "is ono of the great glaciers of the world. Now it has become a battlefield, the. strangest on which man ever fought, I can give no bettor idea of its conformation than this homely comparison. Heap up .a pan of loose, jagged, splintered ropk, with many of the splinters sticking up in the air, and pour over it a pail of white glue. The glue will settle, before it hardens, into the spaces between the rock points, and here and there it will flow over the edge oMhe pile. -The splinters of rock are the grey glacial peaks; the glue is the eternal ice; the points of overflow are the passes, like the one upon which we stand now. We rested, shivering under our double sweaters and our coats, and, when our hearts grew accustomed to tho new altitude, there was more climbing .'and some perilous scrambling until at last, with little force left in us, wo reached one of the very highest guns of Armageddon. Of the gun it is not necessary to speak. How they got it thero by sheer man-power, sometimes advancing only a hundred yards a day, sometimes stopped by a blizzard, sometimes following new ads blasted out by export Italian dynamite workers who learned their trade in the Pennsylvania mills— will mako a great story when the war is done. To draw it within killing rango of the Austrians many a bravo man had died in the blizzards."