ALLIES MAKE APRRECIABLE PROGRESS.

Pahiatua Herald, Volume XIX, Issue 4947, 23 September 1914, Page 5

ALLIES MAKE APRRECIABLE PROGRESS.

ENEMY GETTING STRONG RE INFORCEMENTS. ENORMOUS CONVOYS AT CAMBRIA. JAPS SINK A GERMAN CRUISER. Press Association. —Electric Telegraph.—Copyright.

FEROCIOUS FIGHTING. AT.I.IF.S REPULSE THE ENEMA. THE GENERAL SITUATION. Paris, La-t Night. Official/ —Our left wing is on the .right, b, of the Oise and we have f advanced to the height of Passingly, on the east of the Oise. North of Aisne the Germans have manifested renewed activity, and violent combats, ending in bayonet charges, ensued in the tegion of Craonne. Everywhere the enemy was repulsed. Round Rheims the Germans do not attempt infantry attacks and have to limit themselves to cannonading our front with heavy artillery. In C-hampaogne and on the western Hope of the Argonne beyond Surname we have taken Mesnil and AAvievre. The enemy continues to hold ihianoourt and has cannonaded Hassonchatel. A report from Lorraine states that in the Vosges the Germans are fortifying themselves on the Deime side and to the south of Chaeausalins. - A furious battle is raging east ot Peronne between Roissel and Saint Quentin, the French left endeavouring to cut the enemy’s retreat towards Belgium. It is rumoured at Amiens that the Germans are beaten. Their artillery fire is slackening and their ammunition has given out. Offical. —Our left has mpde further slight progress on the banks of the Oise. An Algerian division captured another standard. All attempts of the Germans to break our front between Craonne and Rheims have been repulsed. The Germans furiously bombarded Rheims Cathedral, which is in flames. M e have taken the village of Souvain and a thousand prisoners. In Lorraine the enemy has fallen hack beyond our frontier, and has evacuated Avricourt. In the Vosges the enemy tried unsuccessfully to resume the offensive. Our progress there is slowing owing to the bad weather and the defensive ■works.

A GRIM SPECTACLE

Paris, Last Night. The valley ef the Aisne presents a terrible spectacle. The ground is strewn with the dead of the nations, aiiM horses in inextricable confusion, broken machine guns, foundered cannon and scattered accoutrements from the battle nearly a week old. The Allies advanced foot by foot. Shot and shell poured on them in an avalanche, yet they forced the Germans back towards Noyon. 4 ‘Terrible fellows! I have seen nothing like it,” was a Frenchman’s comment on the doggedness of the British fighting on the slopes above Soi6sons. The British fought in open order, each man in a little, dug-out, creeping and dig- \ ging ‘as they went. The Germans 'Vnirf'd shells on them, but their reJfetanee took the spirit out of the JBemy. R HEIMS DEVASTATED. ANCIENT CATHEDRAL SHELLED j ; London, Last Night. The Daily Mail’s correspondent says at Rheims the fire started on Saturday afternoon and at lea6t five j hundred shells fell between early i morning and sunset. Part of the city several hundred yards square ignited and street after street beI came lurid with blazing houses and shops. Meanwhile the battery on the 1 hill of Noagent I’Abessy made the Cathedral a deliberate mark, and shell after shell smashed away the i old masonry and an avalanche of stonework thundered down into the 1 streets. Subsequently the scaffoldI ing at the east end of the Cathedral ignited and burning splinters fell on th'Vroofs and the whole of the old • o?tft* timbers caught. Soon the nave and transepts were a roaring furnace, flames left from the towers of i the western end and blazing pieces of » carved woodwork crashed to the floor where the Germans had accumulated great pile- of straw intending to use the Cathedral as a hospital. These ignited, devouring the panel- ! ling of the altars and the confessional. The German wounded would have been incinerated but for the French doctors. As the Germans were carried out the crowd howled in uncontrollable passion, and some shouted: ‘‘A Mort.” Some soldiers among the crowd levelled their rifles, but Abbe Andrieux sprang forward 1 between their muzzles and the wounded and said ‘‘Don’t fire! You will make yourselves as guilty as they.” When the day dawned the famous monument was only an empty shell. Paris. Last Night. On Monday only a few walls of the , Cathedral were standing. The Hotel do Villa, the Museum, and other ofJ ficial buildings were almost completely destroyed. The German, intentionally directed their artillery to ‘ the principal buildings. Several in--1 habitants were killed during the , bombardment of the Cathedral. The I Germans killed a number of their own wounded, who were being tendI ed with the French, who were wounded in the hope of flying the. Red I Cross to save, the Cathedral. Amsterdam. Last Night, j • A German official communique , savs: —‘‘'Hie French at Rheims compelled us to reply te their fire. We regret that the city was damaged, but orders were issued to spare the oathedal as much as possible.” Sydney, Last Night. , M Deleasso, French Foreign 4 Minister has cable*] to the French i Consul protesting against German vanj dalism in the destruction of Rheims I Cathedral, thus robbing humanity of an Thcom parable portion of its artistic inheritance.

A THRILL IN ITALY. Rome, Last Night. The bombardment of Rheims Oathe. dial has caused a thrill throughout Italy. The Jiornale d’ltalia describes id as a useless act of barbarism and a lunatic outburst of wounded vanity and cursed pride. OTHER INFAMIES OUTDONE. Lodxion, Last Night. The Times, in a leader on the destruction of Rheims Cathedral, says the Kaiser has outdone the infamous crime at Louvain. THE WOUNDED. , Paris, Last Night, Every evening trains crammed with wounded crawl back from the front, with thirty coaches, which are packed fuller than excursion trains. In the worst cases they are lucky if they can lie at full length. A TERRIBLE GUN. London, Last Night. The German seventeen-inch siege gun discharges a projectile weighing 21,000 pounds, which describes o, parabola covering twelve miles, rising in height to 1200 yards. It is discharged electrically from a considerable distance ,the operator not daring to remain in the vicinity, and the shell explodes with deadly gases. BRITISH ENDURANCE. ATTACK UNDER DIFFICULTIES. LAY THE ENEMY IN HEAPS. London, Last Night. Mr Gibbs, cabling from Chalons on Saturday, said when a great storm was raging at Soissons on Thursday and Friday the British had the most trying time of the war. It tried their nerves and souls to the last point of human endurance. Several who left the trenches on special missions looked as though they had been through a torture chamber and suffered nameless horrors. They were chill, ed to the bone and shaking in every limb. Neverthless there was no growling. The army were as dirty as mudlarks, unshaven, and tattered, but still as confident and as ready to joke as ever. The strength of the German position made it very diflicult for the British to cross the marshland, which is intersected by rivers and canals. At present it is utterly impossible for infantry, cavalry and heavy guns to cross the swamps. The German 11-inchers on the surrounding hills are giving a lot of trouble to the British. The gunners have had an incessant artillery duel for the days covered, whereby both sides have been entrenching, and over open ground with rifle fire and bayonet charges in order to obtain advantageous positions for further entrenchments. The British showed superiority in the battle of the trenches, and gained good ground though at heavy cost. With their experience in the Boer war the British were far better than the enemy, taking advantage of every scrap of cover, and forming in open formation. On several occasions they took trenches which by all the rules of war were impregnable. The British were assisted by Zouaves, who repeatedly charged under the deadliest fire, and reached the enemy’s position, when the Germans fled, but not until the trenches were filled with the corpses of the slain bv the Frenchmen, who tossed them out of the pits as though they were hay-making, as one of them said. General Von Kluck on Friday night ordered a general advance of infantry from Chavinguv and Naizkechateau upon the foremost • British trenches round Soissons, while the ar tillery again searched the position endeavouring to unnerve the British. Tlie wind was howling and rain pouring down, and the British needed all their courage. Shrapnel killed many, hut the Germans were not the right stuff to turn out entrenched British, and they retired quicker than they came and the British guns pounded them and rifle fire laid them in heaps.