DUMB DRIVEN CATTLE.

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume XLIV, Issue 14287, 2 May 1917, Page 9

DUMB DRIVEN CATTLE.

THK GERMAN MIND*

LUAOIN AM 1S1»1«0D.KS.

HiXI'EIUKXCIiS OF AXZAUS.

(Commonwealth Uilicial Correspondent.) British Headquarters, France, Feb. 14. '< It is not easy to givvv a sure guide to those who want to know what they can really believo as true m all the countries' stories from the Avar. About tile Germans, for example— l noticed a paragraph headed "German treachery," telling how, when the Germans left their trenches and fled before one of the Australian attacks m the summer, they left behind a number of discs with spikes, so arranged that ' any of our men who touched, olie of them was immediately blown up hy some explosive wihioli tho thing- contaiued. Now that was simply a rather exaggerated description of the German disc bomb, lt is a very ' touchy and rather delicate weapon, which I behove the German**, have more or Jess abandoned, possibly because it was tc-o risky. It has rarely done any damage- to the, Australians, though . it was , occasionally at one period, found m trenches, whioh, the Germans liad left. But even if it had been left m millions with the object of blowing Up .the Australian .(troops ■ there ia nothing that a soldier -would complain about m this. It is nothing like as cdnning or eiffeotive as a hundred devices which wt'i-*> left beliind by ouraelves at Anzac with the object of welcoming our friends the Turks. To call this sort of thing treachery is. simply to weaken the I overwhelming, truths which humanity has against the Germans'. ... I There is a stoiy. that wlieii General Birdwood was visiting a hospital behind the Somme he came upon a man "badly wounded. He asked how it happened, and the answer was, "Well, mister, yer see, it was like this way. I got into a sorb of shell-hole like m front of the trenches wiih a Lewis gun, and was sniping the Bodies about 30 yards away as they came down a sap — and the cowardly ."blighters threw a bomb at me.'* I do not believe the story for an instant, because, though an . Australian soldier might think, tlie. Germans 1 impertinent to stand up to him at 30 yards, he would certainly. not -think 'them cowardly— they would he a "lot of coldfooted blanks'' if they did not. i BAD, BUT NOT AS BAD' AS PAINTED, i

That is one sort of story which wants* to be carefully scrutinised — the atrocity which is not atrocious — because it is apt to weaken tlie case against those atrocities which are. And I should be very disturbed m mind if anything that I have written were toj encourage the impression, that the German is lacking m rut-hl essness, ,- and that he need f not be treated with at arm's length. The Australian experience is that the 9 Germans m tike front line— «the general run; .of 'soldiers and even m any of the officers— -do., not display the. brutality of nature attributed to them by those who -i have not met them before. But the ' German iv the front line is not more master of lus actions than a steel pin * m a railway engine. He is kind exactly a« long- as the great frowning "*' brain of Germany, sitting miles behind ? the front, thinks it expedient to be .i kind; and if the brain thinks it more expedient to be brutal, the man m the > front line I>as to be as brutal a» it is oxpedient .'foivihim to be», Tlie German {"•pldioi 4 takes. Shis orders from above as part of the uaiquestioned plan, of existence. His wishes, his moral prejudices, his ideas of humanity *or decency do not oven strike him as relevant. A louse has more, independence of spirit and, character than the ordinary German; private. -

THK UNSPEAKABI/E HUN. One does not -wish Uy give the im- ' .pression that the German is to be treated as a milder fighter than he has bean made ovA to be ; because one knows perfectly well that if it suited the ugly' brain at the back of liis linos -to treat Australian eoldier-s-r-their -wounded, 1 -' for example, m No Mini's Land — with bru- : tality, then brutally would he treat them. , iOn one occasion, when such, orders certainly did come from the Ger- • man staff there foUowed a scene which ' no Australian wlio saw it will ever for, [ get or forgive. I am not goinig to in- j flict a, deal of unnecessary pain, by describing it. PTJie details are duly noted, I and they >yill be told all m due timo ■ when the history of this war cornea to j be written. Do not let any man imagine that .the German General Staff is An institution with which you' can. deal •with kid gloves. It and the whole brutal, boastful system and philosophy upon which it has been fed, and upon which it haa grown into its- brutal strength, are a pest to t be stamped once and for all out of existence-^and that is> what we are fighting for. But tho little Germa.ii machine hands and tradesmen who make up a considerable part of the German front line troops to*-day are not stuff which was reared and educated to its own purpose by tho machinery of Bismarck and Moltke. I have . friends .who m days after the Marne. 'saw themselves the results of unspeakable deeds by the German cavalry on the -women of France — old women and young alike. The German opposite the Australians has never had the chance of repeating that vileness, and has never given evidence'' of being the man who would be prone to it- \ SILLY '.STORY FROM POZIERES. It is equally wise to bo cautious m

believing the more highly -colored .sort of «tories about our ti-oops. 'I-remem-ber reading, under Several sets of Headlines, how a. Frenchman— -returned from tlie^ front — had brought a story of the Australian attack on l^ozieres. How ,• they fought from, house to house *up the street of that deadly village. I think this wa« .the account which spoke of then? fighting A»*itih. knives. Tliere was not an atom, of truth or of. anything eveit approaching or distantly, resembling truith i»v tl;at story — except possibly the statement that .the Frenchman had told it. Very possibly ih,o . diid, ., and believed it.- But 'who' told, it to him, and' who told it to the man who. told it to, his informant, ihe message did not state, and thaL ig the very material part which Ik almost always left ou6 of the more richly-colored narratives. As a matter of fact, it goes without saying that ■.Australians did not fight with knives at Pozieres, and they did not fight from houso to house, because there were no honst-w to fight from. They | occasionally used ihe bayonet — fcliovewere- even a few real bayonet . duels with fiermariK who stood up to them. : ■Uut 99 per cent, of })n> real hand-to- i hand fisrhtiug wti« carried on with #yo ' wesipoii only— the liand -jfi-pjiadii. ( And with that Weapon, wiliich Australians j have learned to use -perhaps better than any other, there were such lights enacted up and dowii certain shattered trenches and back ay-aiii,, hour after hour, day and night, and) day again, without ceasing, ;i« /will make the Australian's blood rise when he hears the j full s-i'ory of them — battles I suppose , such as have rarely been fought since I the days of ihe Ifoniaus— -ii|Aoi)o, case such a ba"ttlo a» -ytthin my limited reading and knowledgo has never before been fought at all, when 15,000 bombs were thrown by ono sid:> alone m a 15 hours fight. , . . THE TRUE AND FALSK. I suppose that the best advice lUuit one can give to those who wish to discriminate between the true and the false if"Be cautious." You ' kuow what sort of man the Australian' is, and therefore you know what is likely lo be true of him. As for tho Oermant', you kuow that for two generations they have been .. deliberately educated tyy'.itAißir statci-men and professors m , the doctrine that might is right and that the only thing worth being is strong ; some have learned tho lesson well, and some only superficially. And I dare say mo.-.! Australians havelearnt to judge cautiously by those rules long before this.