Слике страница
PDF
ePub

here bombing and hand-to-hand fighting continued until the British captured the position next day. The scene is thus described by Philip Gibbs:

"The way to the trenches was the most amazing scene of the war-more terrible and wonderful and as great a battle picture as any I had seen before. Everywhere along the way which leads to the country between Hardecourt and Maurepas, there is great desolation and ruin of all the things that grew or stood upon the earth. Here, for two miles or so, a long avenue of trees is a highway of violence. Not a tree stands whole, and their great trunks have been slashed and broken by the shell fire and lie with ragged stumps great giants -across the unending shell craters there.

-

"On one side was Maurepas, a few brick ruins standing in the midst of bare black trunks and naked branches. In a turmoil of shell craters on the other side was Guillemont. I could see every tree in it and one solitary shell of a barn and a few black German crosses to their dead and blown-out dugouts on the southern side."

Irish regiments played a gallant part in the taking of Guillemont, and a week later it was the men from Munster, Dublin, Connaught, and the west and south of Ireland who captured Ginchy. They came out of the battle weary and spent, and left many good comrades behind, but they still marched proudly. "A great painter," says an eyewitness, "would have found here a subject to thrill his soul-that long trail of Irish regiments, some of them reduced by losses and with but few officers to lead them. Ahead of them walked one Irish piper, playing them home to the harvest fields of peace, with a lament for those who will never come back."

New Armored Monsters Another day of great remembrance for the British was Sept. 15, when their soldiers broke through the German third line and went out into the open country to deal new blows to the war machine that had seemed so incredibly strong before the days of Verdun. A new element was introduced that day in the form of enormous armored motor cars that travel

on caterpillar feet right across shell craters, over German trenches, through brick walls and ruined houses, smashing their way through everything like monsters from prehistoric ages. As for trees in their way-" they simply love trees," as one officer remarked. They wear a steel armor that makes them impervious to bullets and ordinary shell fragments; in short, they promise to play the rôle of veritable dreadnoughts on land.

Tommy Atkins promptly dubbed these modern ichthyosaurs "tanks" or "Willies," greeting them with roars of laughter as they crawled with uncanny nonchalance across craters and earthworks until they poured their fiery breath into the enemy trenches. One writer compares them to toads of vast size emerging from the primeval slime in the twilight of the world's dawn. They have furnished both humor and aid to the Allies on the Somme since the day of their début. The fact that their mysterious internal organs were manufactured by a farm tractor company in Peoria, Ill., does not alter the other fact that in their armored form they are a British innovation. They seem destined to do deadly work as they sprawl across enemy trenches, enfilading them with machine-gun fire, and themselves as indifferent to rifle bullets as a rhinoceros to mosquito bites.

The Fall of Falkenhayn

The battle of the Somme has an evident connection with the recent fall of General von Falkenhayn from the position at the head of the Kaiser's Great General Staff. A press dispatch of Sept. 19, which states that the headquarters of the Great General Staff have been removed from the western front to the eastern, apparently confirms the triumph of Hindenburg's policy over that of Falkenhayn and of the Berlin Court faction which had dominated military affairs since the beginning of the war, and earlier. A Rotterdam correspondent tells the story substantially as follows:

In January, 1916, there was a bitter controversy between Generals Falkenhayn and Hindenburg regarding the conduct of the war. Hindenburg was utterly opposed to any big offensive in France.

He advised striking another blow immediately at Russia, and was already preparing a new offensive there behind Courland. General Falkenhayn, however, refused to give him the additional forces necessary for this purpose, and Hindenburg's plan was overruled in favor of an offensive against Verdun. The German Crown Prince is believed to have been the sustaining power behind Falkenhayn in making this disastrous decision.

Before the failure at Verdun was fairly written into history the AngloFrench drive on the Somme came to

emphasize the extent of the error. The Kaiser at last turned to Hindenburg, elevating him to supreme military power in place of the Court favorite, Falkenhayn, but too late to undo all the harm that had been done to Hohenzollern prestige. For the deposition of Falkenhayn necessarily involved a certain discrediting of the Crown Prince and his ultra-militaristic following. Thus the radical change in the General Staff is taken by the outside world to indicate the extent of a reaction in Germany against the faction primarily responsible for the war.

Italy and Germany Formally at War THOUG

HOUGH Italy has been at war with Austria since May 23, 1915, and has been practically in the same hostile relations with Austria's ally, Germany, for an equal length of time, the formal declaration of a state of war with the latter nation dates only from Aug. 28, 1916. Official notification of the event was transmitted to the United States in the following note to Secretary Lansing from Count Macchi di Cellere, the Italian Ambassador, who was then sojourning at a Massachusetts Summer resort:

From Royal Italian Embassy.

Beverly Farms, Mass, Aug. 28, 1916. To Mr. Secretary of State:

I have the honor to address the following communication to your Excellency in the name of the King's Government:

Systematically hostile acts on the part of the German Government to the detriment of Italy have succeeded one another with increasing frequency, consisting of both an actual warlike participation and economic measures of every kind.

With regard to the former, it will suffire to mention the reiterated supplies of arms and of instruments of war, terrestrial and maritime, furnished by Germany to Austria-Hungary, and the uninterrupted parti ipation of German officers, soldiers, and seamen in the various operations of war directed against Italy. In fact, it is only thanks to the assistance afforded her by

Germany in the most varied forms that Austria-Hungary has recently been able to concentrate her most extensive effort against Italy. It is also worth while to recall the transmission by the German Government to Austria-Hungary of the Italian prisoners who had escaped from the Austro-Hungarian concentration camps and taken refuge in German territory.

Among the measures of an economic character which were hostile to Italy it will be sufficient to cite the invitation which at the instance of the Imperial Department of Foreign Affairs was directed to German credit institutions and bankers to consider every Italian citizen as a hostile foreigner and to suspend payments to him; also the suspension of payments to Italian laborers of the pensions due them by virtue of a formal provision of the German law.

The Government of his Majesty the King did not think that it could longer tolerate such a state of affairs, which aggravates, to the exclusive detriment of Italy, the sharp contrast between the de facto and the de jure situation already arising from the fact of the alliance of Italy and of Germany with two groups of nations at war with one another.

For these reasons the Royal Government has, in the name of his Majesty the King, notified the German Government through the Swiss Government, that, as from today, Aug. 28, Italy considers herself in a state of war with Germany.

Please accept. Mr. Secretary of State, the assurances of my highest regards.

MACCHI DI CELLERE.

By Lord Northcliffe

Owner of The London Times and London Mail

Lord Northcliffe's article was written at the British front in France just before the storming of Pozières in August.

T

AKE this powerful pair of fieldglasses in your hand. They were captured in a German dugout, and bear the famous mark of Zeiss of Jena. Adjust them carefully and look well over to where dark clouds of shells are bursting so rapidly that they form what looks like a dense mass of London fog, with continuous brief and vivid flashes of explosions. That is Pozières. That is how Fricourt looked and how Longueval is looking on the day this is penned. From behind where we sit ensconced in an old German trench there come night and day the bang and the far-traveling scream of British shells. It does not seem possible that any one can emerge alive from those bombarded villages.

From north to south is an irregular chain of watchful observation balloons. High and glittering in the sunshine are planes, directed as often as not by boys who in happier times would be in the boats or the playing fields. Their heroism during the last few weeks has never been equaled, except in this war.

Along the Somme

The battles of the Somme are not, of course, so easily witnessed as those which can be seen from the heights around Verdun, but they are a great deal more visible and understandable than the depressing artillery duels in the plains and swamps of Flanders. Neither photographs nor maps give much real impression of the great panorama, which is, indeed, only possible for an onlooker to understand when accompanied by one who has witnessed the steady conquest of the German trenches from the beginning of the movement which was made on July 1. What is easy to realize, and so cheering to our soldiers, is that we give the Germans full measure and more in the matter of guns and shells. A

couple of hours in any place where the battles can be properly observed is enough for the nerves of the average civilian, for to see battles properly one must be well in reach of the enemy, and so when we have had our fill we make our way along a communication trench to where a small and unobtrusive motor has been hidden.

Presently we come to the roads where one sees one of the triumphs of the war, the transport which brings the ammunition for the guns and the food for the men, a transport which has had to meet all kinds of unexpected difficulties. The last is water, for our troops are approaching a part of France which is as chalky and dry as the South Downs of England.

A Great Organization

Some researches with a view to placing on record the work of the British Red Cross Society and Order of St. John in their relations to the wonderful Army Medical Service in France have brought the writer into touch with almost the most splendid achievement of the war, the building up of the great organization that lies between the Somme and the British Isles.

Communication being as urgent as transport, the Royal Engineers have seen to it that the large area of Northern and Northwest France in which our armies are operating has been linked up by a telephonic system unique. It is no mere collection of temporary wires strung from tree to tree. The poles and wires are in every way as good as those of the Post Office at home. The installation might indeed be thought to be extravagant, but cheap telephoning is notoriously bad telephoning. A breakdown of communications which might be caused by the fierce wind and electric storms which have happened so frequently in the war might spell a great inconvenience or even

worse. An indistinct telephone is useless. And so, marching with the army, and linking up a thousand essential points, is a telephone service that cannot be bettered. Today it would be quite possible for the Commander in Chief, if he so desired, to call up London from beyond Fricourt, for our wires are already in places where we saw them burying the blackened corpses of dead Germans, and where the sound of great guns makes it sometimes necessary to shout in order to make one's self heard in a conversation.

Army Telephones

Every officer or head of department of importance in the British zone has a telephone at his hand, so that he may give and receive orders, not absolutely secret, by the quickest and most popular means of communication. Where necessary, the English telephones are linked up with the trunk lines of the French Government, for which purposes interpreters are placed in the exchanges. The speed of communication is remarkable. It varies, of course, with the amount of business, but I have seen a man call up Paris, London, and the seaport bases in France all within an hour.

Supplementing the telephonic system is a telegraphic link, and there is also the wireless. The Army Signal Corps is to be congratulated on a fine achievement. Over and above these there are the motor dispatch riders, some of whose experiences during the war have been as thrilling as those of our air boys. The noisy nuisance of our peace-time roads at home has been a prime factor in the prompt waging of war. Motor cycles and portable telephones appear in the most out-of-the-way spots. Far beyond Fricourt I met these cyclists making their way in and out and around the shell holes.

A few days later when visiting one of the workshops at the base I saw the wrecks of similar machines twisted and smashed out of all recognition by shrapnel, each speaking of an adventure, and perhaps a tragedy. The fact that these derelicts were being examined for possible repair is a portent of the rigid economy with which, on the French side

of the Channel at any rate, and perhaps on both, the war is now being conducted. An Aeroplane's Staff

The war plane of 1916 flies upward and away with the speed and grace of a dragon fly. She has been made perfect and beautiful for her flight by skilled expert mechanics. When she returns after, let us hope, her conquest, the boys who have escorted her in the air (one of these I met was at school last year) hand her over again to those attendants to see if she has any rent in her gown or other mishap which may be speedily mended. When, therefore, you see an aeroplane you must realize that each machine has its staff. Speed and efficiency being prime essentials of victory, her caretakers must be skilled and young. As for her supplies, there must be at hand a great quantity of spare parts ready to be applied instantaneously, and there must be men, in case of need, who can either alter or even make such parts. There must be those who understand her camera and its repair, her wireless and its working, men who have already learned the mysteries of the newest bombs, rockets, and machine guns. I take the aeroplane as an instance because of its prominence in the public eye.

What applies to an aeroplane applies in other degrees to every kind of gun, to every form of motor or horse transport, ambulances, field kitchens, filters, and to a thousand articles which at first sight do not necessarily seem to be part of war making.

The army behind the army is full of originality. It has already improved, on the spot, much machinery which we had thought to have attained perfection. This is a war of machinery as well as of bravery, and among Germany's many blunders was her forgetfulness of the British power of quick improvization and organization in unexpected circumstances, which is a secret of our success in building up the empire in strange lands.

The army behind the army is being squeezed for men for the front. In some places it can legitimately bear more squeezing, and it is getting it. On the other hand, owing to their own burning desire or by the pressure of the authori

ties men have left the anvil, the tools, the lathe, or the foundry for the firing line who in the end would have killed more Germans by the use of their own particular skill in the workshop.

Our L. of C. in France (line of communication) has developed to what must be one of the largest organizations in the world. It represents 6 per cent. of the whole of our forces in France. It has to deal with more spheres of human industry than I should be allowed to mention. Its personnel is being revised continually by medical examinations that eliminate fit men for the trenches. task is a delicate one. An organization absolutely essential to victory has at length, and after infinite labor, by promotion of the skilled and rejection of the incompetent, been set on its feet. We must make changes with caution.

Economy and Salvage

The

At various times I have personally observed the great organizations of the Clyde, the Tyne, of Belfast, of Woolwich, Chicago, in and around Paris, at St. Etienne, and in the Creusot works, in Hamburg, in Essen, and at Hoechst on the Rhine, and I say without hesitation that, making allowances for war time, our lines of communication organization, super-imposed as it is upon the overworked French railways and roads, and in a country where there is no native labor to be had, is, in August, 1916, as near perfection as ever it can be. And I say more, that, difficult as economy and war are to mate, I have on the occasion of this visit and in contrast to the days of 1914 seen nothing wasted. In the early months of the war there was waste at home and abroad arising from lack of control of our national habit of spending money with both hands. remember a certain French village I visited where every tiny mite was filling its mouth with English bread and jam. Today there is enough food and a greater variety of foods than before, but there is no waste that is visible even to an inquisitive critic.

I

Coming to the front, not only in the high commands and among regimental officers and along the line of communication, is a pleasing proportion of Scotch

folk who, while generous in the giving of ambulances, are not accustomed to waste anything in war or at any other time. Today, almost before the reek and fume of battle are over, almost before our own and the enemy dead are all buried, the Salvage Corps appears on the bloody and shell-churned scene to collect and pile unused cartridge and machine gun belts, unexploded bombs, old shell cases, damaged rifles, haversacks, steel helmets, and even old rags, which go to the base and are sold at $250 a ton. It is only old bottles, which with old newspapers, letters, meat tins, and broken boxes are a feature of the battlefields that do not appear to be worthy of salvage.

Regarding the utilization of waste products there is as much ingenuity and industry along the lines of communication as would satisfy the directorate of the most highly overorganized German

fabrik. At one place I saw over 1,000 French and Belgian girls cleansing and repairing clothing that had come back from the front. They work and talk and sing with alacrity, and I witnessed the process of the patching and reconstructing of what looked like an impossible waterproof coat, all in the course of a few moments. Such labor saves the British Nation hundreds of thousands of pounds, and is considered well rewarded at a wage of half a crown (62% cents) a day.

Elsewhere I saw men using the most modern Northampton machinery for soling and heeling any pair of old boots that would stand the operation, and such footgear as was useless was not wasted, for by an ingenious contrivance invented on the spot by a young Dublin bootmaker the upper parts of such boots were being converted into bootlaces by the thousand.

In the army machine shops the waste grease is saved and the oil which escapes from every such establishment is ingeniously trapped and sold to local soap makers at the equivalent of its present very high value.

Workmen Translated

Since the early days of chaos and muddle we have conveyed across the seas

« ПретходнаНастави »