MORE MEN AND SHELLS.

Taihape Daily Times, Volume 7, Issue 310, 29 September 1915, Page 7

MORE MEN AND SHELLS.

. .. -+■ — SIB J. FRENCH'S LETTER TO MR. BEN TILLETT. "Our unpreparedness lias cost us thousands of valuable lives, and I want to speak out for those men who are ready to give their lives. We ought to help them.'' "U'ith these words Mr. Ben Tillett add.fctscd a Palladim audience on a recent night on the lessons he had learnt during his sojourn at the front. He mentioned that he had been under shell-fire and within 300 yards of a formidable German trench, which was "nothing to the risk the average Tommy had to take every day." Then he read the following letter from Field-Marshal French, whose sister. Mrs. Despard, was on the stage with him:— "Our armies are doing splendid work, and more men and more materials must be immediately forthcoming to back up the zeal and courage of our lighting forces. Our men in the field are looking to the nation to vigorously back them up. Energetic measures and concentration of all our national resources to secure greater efficiency will icsson the k>ss of life by limiting the duration of the war.'' , He had been, Mr. Tillett continued, among the men stricken down by the i->rrible gases the Germans were using. To the British public he would say — and he was speaking from the men in the trenches—that if, for any sentimental reason, they refused to use this weapon of gas, they were not giving our men the chance they ought to have. Mr. Tillett showed the audience evidene of the devilish, fiendish hate the Germans entertained for our soldiers, in the form of clips containing cartridges where the bullet had been cut on the slant, so as to inflict a diabolical wound, and a sword bayonet with saw edges. 'He referred to an address he dejivered to the Northumberlands, when one of the men said to him, "Ben, go back and tell them there are only three left out of my company, but we are not beaten, and we have accounted for more of their men than they have of ours.'' "Our men," proceeded Mr. Tillett, "are prepared to fight, and it is up to us to give them the munitions they want.'' ' The British Army, he said, in conclusion, was placed on 35 miles of battle front, against 300 miles that the French were holding, but that 35 miles was the crux of the position.