THE PRACTICAL BRITISH.

Rangitikei Advocate and Manawatu Argus, Volume XL, Issue 11437, 30 November 1915, Page 5

THE PRACTICAL BRITISH.

MAKING GOOD HOADS BEFORE ATTACKING.

GALLIPOLI MEN PLEASED.

.London, Nov, 39

Mr Ward Price, from Salonika, says that the British are now in the first line base, in the face of the enemy, in country as different from the polders of the Belgians and the slag-heaps of Lens, as the Potteries district in England is from the Highlands of Scotland. The French early in November, after a stiff encounter, drove the enemy up a ravine across the valley northward, and were making good their position along a crest above a village, when, on the night of the 16th, the Bulgarians attacked with considerable energy, creeping down the gullies on their side of the valley, and noiselessly scaling the steep slopes opposite with their feet shod with leather mocassins. The French trenches were of an elementary character, cut in the rocky soil, which made digging almost impossible. They had no entanglements. In front of the position there were three hundred dead Buigars lying under the crest the next morning. They had been killed with the bayonet in trying4o rush the low parapet. The valleys were strewn with yellow maize, which the peasantry had been forced to leave to rot, where the partridges, hares and woodcock abound. You need to see the British in this unfamiliar setting to realise why we are a great colonising race. Mr Ward Price concludes: Neither the grandeur of the scenery nor the sombre history of the country distracts them from setting about their matter-of-fact military duties. Already they have well-beaten paths j on the hillsides, where the inhabitants have never before troubled to make a track from the rail-head. We have the best road in Macedonia as a line of supply. The men from Gallipoli, with its heat and flies, find an almost unbelievable contrast. ! Until now the ten thousand Bulgar- : iaus facing us have been satisfied j to leave us alone. They apparently I hold a scattered line of trenches, | blockhouses and hangars along j ridges parallel to ours. Their patrols j occasionally meet ours in the valley i at night-time, the enemy frequently seizing the opportunity to sur- j rendeiy owing to the scarcity of: food. !