SIDELIGHTS ON THE WAR.

Waipawa Mail, Volume XXXVII, Issue 7914, 4 August 1917, Page 4

SIDELIGHTS ON THE WAR.

FROM VARIOUS SOURCES. The Hun at Home. Household troubles, principally food distress, have just ben responsible for a typically Hunnish crime in Gassel, a Prussian royal borough. A joiner, in desperation over his economic plight, poisoned himself, his wife and his four children, aged between one and ten years. Call-up for One-armed Man. When a vanman with one arm was granted temporary exemption by the Newport Tribunal the chairman asked if the Army took men with only one arm. The Military representative: Yes; and men with one leg too. A man with one arm who can drive a civilian van can driye an Army van. Suppressing the Truth. The German Government recently confiscated the whole of the edition of the “Vossiche Zeitung,” in which Captain Persius had written an article admitting that the war could not be determined as a result of Germany’s submarine policy. Captain Persius wrote: “The hopes of those who believe that England can by lack of foodstuffs be forced to her knees and made to beg for peace must be disappointed.” A Secret Discovered. One of the most interesting of war discoveries (says a writer in the “Pall Mall Gazette”) is the secret of making optical glass of the kind used in field-glasses, periscopes, and rangefinders, which up to now has been jealously guarded by the Germans. The credit of the discovery is due to the Bureau of Standards in New York. Experts of the Bureau have been hard at work for two and a-half years trying to get at the secret of the process, and the staff and equipment will now be enlarged sufficiently for the production of sufficient quantities to meet all the requirements of the United States Government. Aerial Armaments. There was a recent duel in which a British pilot, having exhausted ammunition from both his machine guns, managed to get close enough to his antagonist to shoot him down with a revolver, says Mr Beach Thomas in describing the air fighting on the British front. This unusual incident has served to recall the fact that when the war began in 1914 the only weapons our aerinl pilots had were pistols and carbines. AVliat a far cry to the armament of our latest fighting scouts, with their heavy calibred machine guns, timed to spray steel-jacketed pellets of death through the whirring blades of propejlers, or set upon swivel mountings which permit a play of fire in any direction.

“We Want Portsmouth.” The 11 Deutsche Korrespondenz ’ ’ (Berlin) publishes a collection of statements on annexation by members of the Bonn group of the All-German League, says the Amsterdam correspondent of the “Daily Chronicle.” The most interesting is that of Privy Councillor Trautmann, who is professor at Bonn University, and a friend both of the Kaiser and the Crown Prince. He demands that:— Courland should he incorporated in the German Empire. So much territory must be taken \ from Prance in east and north, that the Maselle-Maas line, with Belfort, Epinal, Toul, Verdun, and Aisne and Somme line,*with St. Quentin, Amiens, and Dieppe, fall to Germany. England must deliver up all those coaling stations we require. The English Fleet must be carried off and taken to Kiel. The Germans must occupy Portsmouth, Liverpool, Glasgow, and other English towns until England has paid her debts to us in money,

land, and goods. Fantastic, it may be said; but it is what victorious Germany would do, if she did not do more.

Emaciated Munitioners. A remarkable communique in the “Cologne Gazette” deals with the “yellow-colored appearance of German munition workers. In the guise of a violent rebuke of people who “poke fun” at these persons, both men and women, the article is an unmistakable admission that the munitioners are being unmercifully “speeded up” to enable Hindenburg to hold his own against the Allies’ superiority in gun and shell power. Entitled “Hats Off to the Home Army,” the communique intimates that men and women whose hands, faces, and heads have become misshapen, by har& work on munitions have become the butt of heartless ridicule in Germany. The “Cologne Gazette” declares that it is just as disgraceful to indulge in gibes at the expense of these “home troops ” as it would be to laugh at a one-legged or a blind soldier, and the public is called upon to discountenance such inhuman procedure whenever encountered. The semi-official organ emphasises that the “deformed” appearance of munition workers is due to the strain of their calling. There is careful omission of any hint that under-feed-ing, which is general in the towns and cities, is doubtless responsible in part, for the deterioration in the physique of German munitioners.

Huns Who Went Home to Fight. Germans in England and other Allied countries who managed to return to their native country and fight are requested by the German Foreign Museum of Stuttgart to send in full particulars of their experiences in getting away from their “adopted countries.” As “in thousands of cases the experiences must have been thrilling,” the history of Germany’s “glorious era,” it is said, will not be complete until the details are immortalised. Eventually the information is to be published in encyclopaedic form.

Pirates’ Cruelty. The ‘ ‘ Afterpost ’ ’ of Christiania relates that the steward of the torpedoed steamer Fjeldli, with his wife, was taken on board a German submarine, where the commander questioned him regarding the sunken vessel. As the steward steadfastly refused to give any information, the commander then put the steward and his wife on the deck of the submarine, while the Germans went below, closing the water-tight doors behind' them. The submarine then submerged, and the steward and his wife were drawn down many fathoms into the water by the suction. They rose to the surface, however, and were rescued by one of the Fjeldli’s boats. Defence Has Won. Reviewing the British, French, and Italian offensives, the “Frankfort Gazette,” whose idolatry of Hindenburg knows no bounds, declares that it may already be clainied that his strategy of defence has triumphed over the Allies’ strateg-y of attack. “It has been amply demonstrated,” says the Southern German financial organ, “that* Clausewitz’s doctrine — ‘ defence is the stronger form of warfare’—is sound. Defence economises strength. Attack consumes it unless the object of breaking • through is achieved. Brilliant feats of arms show us that our work is blessed—that we are marching on the right road to the happy ending. The enemy is brave, but he is being devoured by his own futility and impotence.”

Conscience Man’s Atonement. News was received in Bath recently that Private Henry Bellamore, Duke of Cornwall’s Light Infantry, was killed in action. So a conscientious objector, whose case created a sensation in the early days of the tribunals, has made the supreme atonement.

Bellamore, an insurance agent, told the local tribunal he thought war was an invention of the devil, and he would go to gaol or be shot rather than help it. If he saw a wounded soldier on crutches fall he would not help him if there were anyone else to do it. Bellamore was told by the tribunal that his views were a sign of disordered mind, not of conscience. He was asked if it had occurred to him that he owed his existence to the protection of the British Fleet. “Oh,” he replied, “I hadn’t thought of that.” Then he joined up voluntarily.