THE WESTERN FRONT

Otago Daily Times, Issue 16545, 19 November 1915, Page 5

THE WESTERN FRONT

QUARTERING TROOPS IN BRUSSELS. ANOTHER BREACH OF FAITH. AMSTERDAM, November 17. Under the pretext of the recurrence of air raids and that information was being supplied to the enemy locally, the German authorities have announced the quartering of troops upon the inhabitants of Brussels. The proclamation was withdrawn in 1914, and a pledge was given against the quartering of troops, in return for the city's payment of ,a levy of 15,000,000 francs. \ ■ MR CHURCHILL'S POSITION. HE DECLINES A STAFF APPOINT- . MENT. (Times and Sydney Sun Services.) LONDON, November 17. (Received' Nov. 18, at 5.45 p.m.) There is much speculation as to Mr Churchill's future. He will join ment in France as a major to-morrow. Messrs Asquith and Bonar Law suggested a position on the General Staff, but Mr Churchill replied that he desired to fight in the ordinary, arduous, dangerous way. WAR AT ITS WORST. s THE ARTOIS BATTLEFIELD. GRIM RELICS OF THE FIGHT. A GRAPHIC DESCRIPTION. LONDON, November 17. (Received Nov. 18, at 9.15 p.m.) Mr Anthony Gibbs, writing in the Daily Chronicle, says: "The battlefield of Artois was the most awful I have seen in grim suggestiveness of war at its worst. The very earth, with its white blotches of clay, pockmarked with innumerable shell-craters, was now truly a dead ground. Everywhere were fragments of broken weapons, and' shells like a bottle rubbish heap. But worse things lie about—fragments of human bodies and half-buried corpses; poor, .tragic relics of mutilated men. They lie in pcols of water, clutching the mud: . One turns coldly from bundles of rags and bones protruding from broken sandbags in places that were once German shelters, and now are wrecked beyond description—a mass of chairs, broken mirrors, and shattered' bones. (Received Nov. 18, at 9.55 p.m.) "This was the work of 1100 French guns and the 300,000 shells which they flung over the countryside before the infantry attack was made, and of the German guns, which had battered' Notre Dame de Lorette since the days of the French victory and the sacrifice. The village of Ablain was a ghastly place, and a hideous proof of the strife. Twisted iron mingled with boots, helmets, furniture, and perambulators. In one German dug-out was found a splendid piano. When returning from this fearful sight, limping men with blood-stained bandages and the stark figure of a French soldier wheeled on a stretcher completed this picture of the awful horror and ruin of war." SUCCESSFUL FRENCH MINES. GERMAN TRENCHES DESTROYED. PARIS, November 18. (Received Nov. 18, at 10.10 p.m.) A communique states : There has been violent cannonading on both sides of .Loos, Angres, and Souchez. We exploded two mines in the Argonne region, destroying German trenches over a large area.