WAR JOTTINGS.

Oamaru Mail, Volume XXXIX, Issue 12392, 7 December 1914, Page 7

WAR JOTTINGS.

The Jollowing story of Sir John French is told by Sir Evelyn Wood: — "When I inspected his regiment, lie being a Alajor, many years ago, I asked his Colonel, pointing to him : "Of what value?' He replied: 'For ever reading military books.' He has been reading ever .since! In 1880, when vrc wore retiring across the Bayuda Desert, after the failure to save Gordon. I saw Major French coming back the last-''man of the last section of the rearguard." A new terror has been added to war. It arises out of the laws passed to enable people to appropriate patents of alien enemies. Certain Canadian chemists have made application for tho-sus-' pension of German patented processes for the manufacture of new derivatives of the paraoxyarvlarsinie acids, the manufacture of derivatives of dioxydianiinoarsenobenz, and of derivatives' of diamidodioxyarsenobenzene. Talk of German atrocities. Attila and his Huns never inflkjtcd -on tlfcir enemies words of 25 letters and 13 syllables. The first blow in the great FrancoPrussian campaign of 1870-1 was struck by Count 'Zeppelin, since world-famous as an aeronaut." On July 24, 1870. within a few hours after the declaration of war, the Count, with a company of eleven horsemen, made a reconnoitring dash into French territory. They were observed, almost surrounded and had to ride for their lives. When speeding through a frontier village a lancer dashed at the Count and wounded his horse. Zeppelin cut the man clown, jumped from his own 'horse to his assailants, and succeeded .:i reaching German soil. In his own army the Kaiser is beginning to be looked upon as a veritable Jonah. He has taken a fancy to pay flj-ing visits to various portions of the fighting area, and his -ajTpearancc is

usually followed 1 by a defeat. He went I to Nancy to make a trimphal entry, and had to leave. quicker than ho arrived. He took command of the operations before Ossowitz and ordered the fortress to be taken in three days. His command was no more effective than was Canute's to the sea. In East Prussia he had to ilee before the victorious troops of the Czar and ran back to Cologne, his arrival there being greeted with anvthing but pleasure by the staff. Before he left for the Niemen district the Kaiser attended a war council at which the military aptitude of the Crown Prince was severely criticised. The Emperor had several fainting fits. "Tho attitude of the German nation towards Briton is positively amazing in its intense vindictivencss," says Alfred Pcrrctt, chief engineer of the Cardiff steamer Clyndwr, who has returned home after two months' detention in Germany. At Memel and Konigsberg we were treated worse than the vilest German criminals incarcerated in the same prisons. While we were marching through the streets of the two towns the people jeered an-J sneered at us, and we were insulted m every possible way. In Konigsberg prison the German prisoners were allowed coffee to drink, but when we | asked for it wo were laughed at, and , saw the coffee thrown away. When com- J ing home we were 38 hcurs in the trai'i ! without food or drink." j

' The presence of the Indian troops in France excited the greatest interest in the towns through which they passed to their hase. French, soldiers, civilians. and girls all went.to :-ee the famous Ghurka knife, and are somewhat appalled when the little natives of Nepal solemnly declare that thrir religion forbids them to draw the weapon without drawing blood. What seemed" an insurmountable difficulty, however, was overcome when some British soldiers who had served in India were able to tell the curious that the knife would be shown if the spectators would allow a slight cut with it to be made on the top of their finger in order to fulfil the letter of the law. A bandaged linger is now becoming quite popular with the Fiench girls.

All Napoleon's correspondence is filled with interesting details on the subject of espionage, and a whole chapter might be written about his intrigues with Ireland alone. Like Kaiser Wilhelm 11.. Napoleon honed to use Ireland to stab England in the back, and, -like. Kaiser Wilhclm 11., he failed o "make good,"' as-the Americans say. Both Napoleon and the Kaiser had an illustrious example to follow, in Frederick the Great. This predecessor on the throne of the Huns was quite unscrupulous in the methods he resorted to. Here is a ruse he recommends to get- news of the enemy when you are in his country: 'Arrest a man of substance, .who has a wife, children, and possessions. Force him to take as his coachman, a wideawake person on whom you can count, who will drive him to the enemy's camp. He goes there, ostensibly, to complain of-the insults you have subjected him to. Give him clearly to understand that if he does not return with vour spy safe and sound you will cut the throats of wife and children, and burn and de-

stroy his property. Frederick had the grace to admit" that this proceeding may be considered "rather harsh and cruel," but it is very useful, he declares, for all that. "I was under the. necessity"—the German Chancellor, :t will be'.seen, could not claim his argument as original, when he attempted to justify his unprovoked assault on inoffensive Belgium —"I was under the necessity of embodying this method atChlusitz. and it answered very well indeed." —The Magpie.