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HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Brussels Post, 1915-1-21, Page 7BRITAIN IS CONFIDENT NOW AS SUB WAS IN WMLS WITH: TUE GREAT NAPOLEQN,• T'her'e Is Sonne Similarity Between Conditions of the Two Conflicts. The New York Evening Post has an interesting and informing com- parison of present eonditions in Europe; and particularly' in Britain with those obtaining during the Ne- poleonio wars, , which follows in part: To find a parallel to the condi- tion of Tnrope to -day, ib is neces- sary to go back to the Napoleonic wars, and it is interesting to no- tice the startling similarity which links the two great eonfiicts, sepa- rated by the gulf of a century. Those were hard times in Britain, and starvation was an ever present menace. Then, as now, the coun- try had staked its ad on the result of a titanic conflict. ,Then, as now, 'the country entered war fresh from the turmoil of a deep social unrest. Then, as now, Ireland was conspic- uously to the fore. But in the midst of it all, the life of the country went on in much the usual routine—ex- actly as it is doing now—and men and women declined to permit themselves to be perturbed by the threatening spectre of the Oorsi- can's armies encamped just across the Channel at Boulogne—Bou- logne, which is now one of the bases of ithat British army battling • side by side with the French against a- common enemy. Year Was a Hard One. The opening of the year 1800 was gloomy, indeed. So utter was the want that it had been communicat- edto-the highest quarters.. The civil list was more than a year in Arrears, and .the King's servants were obliged to:presene him a peti- tion beggingthat some portion of. their wages be paid them. It was several years 'before the King caught up with his expenditures. In ' that year; . too, the Irish Act of Union, was' passed;. in consequence, of the ever-present -menace of re- volt revived by the '98 uprising and the meddling of the•Freuch. Public sentiment was exceedingly uneasy concerning the war. People did not ab first display the same calm con- fidence which strikes observers in England to -day, although later, as they became used to it, the nations'd life returned to ' its 'accustomed channels. Law Against Forestalling. There was a scarcity of food, too, and riots were frequent. The.acts against merchants who purchased stocks of food to lay up in order to command higher prices were put in force. The value of -a load of hay had increased from £2 2s. in 1773 to E7 in 1800. Meat has risen from fourpence a pound to .ninepence. Butter was one shilling and four - pence, where it had been sixpence. Sugar had climbed from eighbpence to one shilling and foul -Fence. Can- dles had almost doubled in price. But perhaps nothing served better to illustrate the hardships of the period than the rise in the poor rates fromone shilling a quarter in 1773to shillings fives s in 1800. g Feeding French Prisoners. -and the country possessed possi- bly a'tonth of the resources now ab its disposal, within eleven weeks of the issuing of the declaration of war nearly 400,000 mets had been enroll- ed in the artily, sbnd the fleet was, equipped and ab sea. There was a patriotic fund, much litre the Prince of Wales'. Fund we read so much about to -day. and instances were not lacking of individual generosity as in the case of a well-known firm which voluntarily offered the Gov- ernment 400 horses, 50 waves arid. 28 boats. Death of Nelson. There was else a spy mania 'u 1803. The fall of the' year 1805 saw Trafalgar, Nelson's death, and the end of the :bogey of a -French in- vasion of England. One wonders if the simultaneous victory and death of any modern British Admiral would create the furore that was caused by Nelson's passing. His state funeral cost $75,000,'a con- siderable sum for those days and it was the grandest ever accorded a subject in England. Parliament atlso voted $1,500,000 to mbe disitribut- ed among the sailors of his fleet. TILE GREAT BRITISH NAVY. Consists of Over Five hundred Ships of All Classes. In ships, in guns, in personnel the British navy is superior to those of Germany abd Austria put so- gether, says Chambers's :Journal; Prior to the introduction -of the modern .dreadnoughts ib was not customary to •place more thee four of the biggest guns -in any, oneyeli p, and, in addition to these, four or five descriptions of smaller guns were. carried. The dreadnought was designed to carry ten big guns, and most of the smaller type were eliminated. This became known as the .aril -big -gun type of vessel, the smaller guns retained (being intend- ed to repel vessels making a special- ty of torpedo attack. The design wag quickly improved upon,- and super -dreadnoughts were soon pro- duced. The advantage of the all - big -gun ship, of whatever type, is that it is able to maintain an en- gagement at far tenger range with its principal armament, and do more damage than was possible with the best'batbleships of the pre - dreadnought era. The naval ',bat- tles in the war between Russia and Japan were he']d'by experts to have demonstrated that a vessel carry- ing a greater number dile/ivy long- range guns is superior to any other type of battleship. The . big ships' volleys in that war, and especially in the final naval battle, were large- ly at distances- ranging •from' 2;000 to 4,000 yards'. Britain secured a lead, with vessel's of the dread - and by o her noughttype,f vast resources has been able. to So•short was the supply of wheat maintain that dead notwithstanding that in 1801 the Government for- Germanys frantic efforts to profit hts bade the sale of fine flour, ordering an her lessen discre arc betwd een that only the unrefined flour, which d -thediscrepancy contains the bran should be used. her fleet, and that of Britain. Ger- England's troubles were further many, however, has no battleshis increased about this time by an an to compare as equals with the ten nouneement by the Feench Govern- British and , best super-dread- ment that it refused any longer to noughts • each, side has three under be responsible dor the feeding es construction, of which the British French prisoners in English hands trio will probably be ready first. —a unique arrangement to this ef- The .secrecy of naval movements feet having been entered into by is as important to -day ass ever the two countries, in consequence was, perhaps more so. This s sur - of Napoleon's having adopted the prising to some on account of 'the attitude that otherwise his soldiers many inventions for improving • and sailors would starve, an atti- communications, particularly wire- tude, too, it may seen, he acban- less .telegraphy- If, however, the Boned the, moment it ,became evi- public can be prevented absolutely dent that a reverse polioy from, using wireless, and the inven- would be more annoying bo enemies. tion is retained entirely for State There were nearly 26,000 of the purposes, the authorities can im< French prisoners in England, and pose that secrecy which is so neces- their feeding was no slight under- sorb to the successful development taking, of the campaign. The, whereabouts of the British ships are .knoWn only to the Admiralty and the King, Conditions were bettered some- and their movements are recorded what in the fall of 1801, with the daily. So- numerous is the British signing of bile phantasmal itreaty of- fleet that out of the 500 odd vessels' peace which was to last until Na- —including the non-combatants—of poled was ready to resume the which it consists, it is considered struggle .again. Naturally, an im- to have between 300 and 400 in the mediate result of the peace was bo North Sea waiting to settle ac relieve the shortage of food and counts wibh the German fleet, which send prices down. Reltre,nchment hue scarcely half JIM number, in armaments also served to lessen These totals include ships d every for a brief interval the tax burdens description '- battleships, babble- d the population. cruisers, heavy armored cruisers, B.efore that year was half over protected cruisers, lighb cruisers, England and Fr a oe were a}l war mute, destroyers, torpedo -shoats, again. It: was thus resumption of sulbulill'ines, mine=sweepers and re- hostilities which served to steel pair shps;, every British heart against Napole- Virtually, at least half the navy en, and which may be said Ito have is always in commi000n•i caused a nrystalization of septi -twee includes the ships in venous Two cerin i!y" ;nen, mother and ,rnen't in favor of war to the butter stages of readiness to. be eonimi-s- tom.; li i daugh-„i, were visiting a.menag- e d. slotted and the shi s tinder repair, A p nd a , �. l.1.eoruitiog was the 'order of the With the exception, perhaps (Atte crle for the first inure, see last thny clay, and, although there was. no last it is Little more thee �'. er cams to the h�pilopo.tarnus; and matter stood for several minutes transfixed lord Kitchener at the War Office 01 da";, u a lveek or lt``,�0 at inet, in silent wonder. `Shen the mother then-•--Engilanji's generals of thl;, ie eolsmission aper ,04,00 Om a wee turned to her daughter and said time were $elks' 'r--mnnder.5 and po lopting every twallatble-ship'in the Slowly to he solemnly ' li'b clans ran 'tl�? �c tdmanlstrativo end British Navy, "� oodnees me I Ain't be plain l" t G Peace Brought Relief. COOKING IN THE TRENCHES. Tea And .Hot hashers Impossible When It. Rains. -An officer at the front writes You say it would interest you to know how we are fed in the trenches. Anything one gets hot s heated over one's- own little fire — which has to be kept very email for obvious reasons. At about 7 a.m. the call comes down the line, "Ra- tion orderlies ab the double!" In reply six mien per platoon (50 men) repair to the quartermaster -ser- geant's •store and there dished , out with one tin of bully beef or one tin of meat end vegebaibles, one loaf of bread or the equivalent in bis- cuits, a rasher of bacon, 4 oz.. jam, 1 oz, butter, and a tea and sugar ra- tion per man, or rather, I should say, should be dished.' mit, as not very frequently are full rations 'forthcoming. The food is brought up .under cover of darkness' the night before by'Kvagon to a place aibout.half a mile from the trenches, and from there it is carried by fatigue parties ,right into the trenches. ' So you see we aren't very hardly dealt with in re food- stuffs. You can picture yours truly alt something to eight every morning crouching over a Welly burning fire to fry a bit of fat and greasy bacon in a dirty messy tin lid; and really, when one finishes up by frying' a bit of 'bread in the gravy it isn't halfibad.• 1f only the clay wouldn't get into everything! And it's ra- ther'poor fun when it's -raised- so hard that it's to wet for a fire and so impossible to make tea, let alone cook your -fat rasher. The com- missariat and Army, Service Corps arrangements are a never-ending source of amazement to us all they are so exhaustive. At night in the trenches we can plainly hear the Germans singing "Der ' Vaterland" round their trench fires, but on -wet days they do not sing. They have started us- ing hand grenades -sounds like a return to the Napoleonic wars — with considerable success. We our- selves haven't "stopped" any, but the battalion on our right had two .pitched into them last week. I must tell you of a novel and pleas- ant experience we all went through the other day—we all (the whole company) had hot baths. Really I think it was one of the best manag- ed concerns I. have ever come across. We all marched up to • a building that was evidently a dere- lict laundry. As soon as the men enbered the building each was serv- ed out with a bundile containing a clean shirt, pants, vest and socks. They filed into a long room, .where there were eight enormous vats full of hat water with little hunks of soap ranged all around the edges. The men undressed at one end of the room,- throwin all their old underclothing on to a `lig heap. Ther outer clothing Their icor n all collect- ed, co g w ed, done ftp into bundles, and pass- ed' -up to 5'room overhead, where ib was all gone over with a hob iron, The R.A.M.C. sergeant in charge of washing arrangements then or- dered 14 men into each vat, and' for 10 minutes the room resounded with of the grain which can be grown, sounds of splashings, gruntings, would, under the present circum - and such cries as "Eh !• Bill, yqu've stances, be criminal neglect. It is gob your foot in my moth !" clear, then, that the country should fine,- "Lumme, this isn't half this conserve its breeding stock. If grain is to is ain't I" As fast as the sergeant rrecomniendedethatty plann s sihouldsale tbe thought each 14 sufficiently clean p man - they were ordered out to dress, in 'nereinllwhichthebutits sbto thener in which the 'greatest quantity their clean clothes and their places of 'rough fodder may become avail - taken by another 14 of the "un- able for feeding purposes, and as washed. . it's wonderful what an to the means by which this other - inspiriting effeot a good hot bath wise waste product, together with and clean nlothing has on tired the screenings and unsalable grain men. The sergeant toad me he had may be utilized to the best possible "Pub through" 1,000 in two days, advantage. - In other words elimi- and that we ahead now get a bath nate waste. Do it by feeding live roughly once every 10 days, which stock. 1 think is a wonderful bit of or- 'Ilhe present low pricee for stock ganizalti.on. cannot !last long. A eare£u1 review of, the world situation makes ' it What Happened. clear that these will be- a shortage next year. Europe isibeooming aerf- He came home and found his ousl, depleted in -bath breeding and young wife dissolved in tears: feeding •stook. The United States; "What do you think has happen- for ten months of -the current year, ed 7" she cried. "I left the cage at its leading markets is Short 746, - open and our canary has flown 045 cattle, 203,000 sllieep and 1, away.' He undertook to give what 694,939 hogs. Canada has, as be - consolation he might and took the fore stated, heavily liquidated her poor distressed lady in his arms. As breeding animals, and, while it may she nestled. against his shoulder a possibly• maintain its quota next new access of sobs convulsed her, year of cattle . and sheep, it is "Ah, George," she murmur' d in a doubtful if more than seventy-five chocking voice, "nO'' I've only you per cent. of the number of hogs will left." Putting It Mitt find their way to market in 1918, eta compared_ wit the current meat., it is,therefore 'a time for live- "Why, Pat, did you enlist into stookmen to stay with their trade, the 34th Regiment 1" "Oelu, shure, The present tendency 18, of course, to be near rey brother, whos in the all the other way. A safe harvest is likely to be reaped by those who have stook for sale next year. Even' Mai it your craving ler drink bankers and business nien. are of that brought you barer" asked the this opinion. sympatheteaal visitor at the jail. One word of advice is to be given, "Great .Seott, 10e0,1101 17o I look So Avoid marketing so far as it Is at stupid as to mistake this place for a all possible to do so denting the. saloon/ ^ Fight Between a German "'Taube" and -a French War Aeroplan r. One of the fast -flying German "Taubes," so called because of its re- semblance to a dove, is shown in this photo endeavoring to escape from a pursuing French aero which is equipped with a rapid-fire machine- gun. The photo was made just as the gunner aboard the French ship was training the machine-gun on the German "Taube," which was threatening to outdistance him. The action took place above the bat- tlefield of the Arras. . THE FARM.. Live Stock Commissioner Says Con- serve the Breeding Stock. Everyone knows that trade condi- tions and ceoinmercial enterprise in. the Dominion have suffered a very serious and unexpected upheaval during the past year. To this situ- ation the war -has, of course;large- ly contributed; klub other causesein- eluding the general financial. de -- pression . throughout the country, have been operative for some months past. The agricultural in- dustry has, naturally, been very, widely affected by these changing conditions and by the varying situ- ation with respect to demand and supply. The rise in the price of grain, together with the corres- ponding fillip to grain production, represents, without doubt, the most outstanding feature of•the direction which has been given to agricultural activity. We need, perhaps, above all things else, sane, -level judgment in the conduct of our agricultural af- fairs during the coming year. It is to be expected that grain produc- tion will be largely increased. The raw products of the soil are, and will he, in demand at remunerative prices. What then is to be said, what course is to be followed, with respect to the breeding of live stock? The high price of feed, on the one hand, and relatively low prices for market stock, on the other, have iesujted in very heavy marketing throughout Canada, particularly in the Western Provinces, of site shock, Suitable for ,breeding purposes. Perhaps this was inevitable, but will these conditions continue 7 Feed grain will, without doubt, be high in price, but it must never be overlooked that the country can maintain very large numbers of Can yon see the heap of elafn that �Ilee, And eightleae turned to the dame•(spllt live stock on the enormous quantity skies of rough fodder which it can pro- • The glassy eyes of elle dendf duce. To waste this, for the sake You have wronged for the Day, you have longed for the Day; 'Mat 1*t the awful acme. 'Tie rotting to you that hill and plain Yield sheaves of dead men amid alto grain; lthat widows mourn for their loved ones slain, And mothers curse thy name. period of October .fifteenth to De- cember fifteenth. This is li time of the year when everybody else has stook for sale. It is a period when packers know that they can fill their cellars with cheap meat. These are the .months when the sur - phis of the whale country finds its .way to the packing centres. It is invariably the period of low prices, uncertain markets and disappoinit- ing - returns to the producers. Breed; .therefore, to have your stock available for sale at ' some other time of the year, Take care to provide sufficient winter feed that you may not be forced to sell when the cold weather Domes. Above all, conserve your breeding stook, THE DAY. BY, (HENRY CHAPPELL, Bath, England, lMr. Henry Ohappell,.a railway porter at Bath, le known to his comrades ae the "Bath Railway Poet," A poem such ne this lifts him to the rank of a national poet.) You boasted the Day, and yon toasted the DaAnd now the Day has come, Blasphemer, braggart and coward all, Little you reek of the numbing ball, The blasting shell, or the "white arm's" tall, As they speed poor humane home. Yon soled for the Day, you lied for the Day, And woke the Day's red spleen. Monster, wbo asked Cod's aid Divine, Then (strewed Hie seas with the ghastly mine; Not ell the waters- of the Rhine Oan wash thy foul hands clean. You dreamed for the Day, 'you schemed for the Day: Watch how the Day will go. Slayer of age and youth and prime (Defenceless slain for never a crime) Thou art steeped in blood es a frog to slime, False friond and cowardly foe. You have sown for the Day, you have grown for the Day; Yours is the harvest red. Oan you hear the groaue and the awful But after the Day theree a price to pay Por the sleepers under tam sod, And Him von have mocked for many a day - Listen and hear what Ho has today: "Vengeance Is mine, I will repay, • What, cad you say to (lode ' Prince World Be Private. It is reported that the ,British War Office has received from his highness Aga Khan, an application, to be allowed to serve as a private in the Indian contingent for the front. His highness is the head of the IOhoja Mohammedans and holds sway over 50,000,000 of. the inhabi- tants of India. His highness is about thirty years of age. And lie D'ld.~ Hibbs—The shrapnel, 1 under- stand, is named after General Shrapnel: Dibbe—That so 7 No doubt his pa, - rents believed their boy would make a noise in the world. And many a man could earn 132 with half the energy he wastes in. trying -to borrow one. 33rd." EGYPT'S ARMY COMMANDER WiN(..'Tail..WAS =AMMO BY SIR Is VELXN WOOL Mastered Arabic 111 Three Months and Knows finch of the Country. With Egypt as part of the Empir in ,a seflse that it paver was before Britain is fortunate in having ,s e the supreme ,tread of the. Egyptian army Sir Francis Wingate, Sirda-s of Egypt, who knows, next to Lord Kitchener himself, more abou Egypt and Egyptian' administration than any other soldier, Sir Francis has spent practically the whole of his life in Egypt. During Lord Wodseley's campaign he was, one of the little ,band of youthful of- ficers who were trained by Sir Eve- lyn Wood when the latter. organized the Egyptian army. Nearly every one of those officers was designed to become famous—Lord Kitchener, Sir Archibald Hunter, and Sir Les- lie Rundle being among the group, Like Lord Kitchener, :Sir Francis set to work in the first place to mas- ter Arabia He is, indeed, a won- derful linguist, and has been known to say that there was no language to which he applied himself that he could not master in three months. Sir Francis has held the position of Sirdar of Egypt longer than any other man, the appointment dating back fifteen years, when he himself was only thirty-eight years of age. He is credited with being the first man to introduce' the motor -car to the desert. He uses a tire with an exceptionally broad tread, and has considerably simplified the difficult problem of desert transport. The stories of Sir Francis' active service would fill a book. He has been mentioned many times in de- spatches, has received the thanks of both House's of Parliament, holds the D.6.0. and has a chest full of. medals and decorations. He is an excellent raconteur, and is rather fond of telling a story of a certain young attache of the Brit- ish Embassy at Petrograd. During a dinner at the palace, at which the Cza-r was present, this official] had the misfortune to upset his glass of wine over the table -cloth. "Do they do that in England' I" asked the Czar, with a smile. "Sometimes, sire," replied the attache ; "but in England nobody makes any com- ment upon it." It was a curious coincidence that Sir Francis' only daughter was born on .the day when he defeated and rid the Sudan of the Khalifs. of Lim Debrikat, in 1899. Su auspicious a "double event" was honored in quite a regal way, for Queen Vic- toria expressed a gracious desire that the infant should be her god- child. Thus it caene .about that Miss Wingate received the name of Victoria. F "WHAT'S THE NAVY DOING 1" JIJE CAMPAIGN IN POLAND RUIN LEFT BEHIND THE GERMAN RETREAT. • Mud Defeated the Object of the Cee. mans. -Stalled Their Guns. The following etory of the German rout in Poland is written by a °erre spondent from the front: It was an .hour beyond Tarte]; that we came upon the first abandoned wagon, leaning with a broken wheel at the edge offthe road: another flour t reat traction en gine, brought ohere itlay, bright nght r d with rest, canting a little over to one side like a ship aground, belly -deep in the need of the road itself. And then begen the dead horses, We were moving west/tipon the track of the German rout that follow- ed their attack to Druslteniki. It was a country that had no need of the dishevelment of war to give it the color of desolation—uplands grey as ashes, overlooking featureless vis- tas of wet land receding to rain- blurred distances, dead skies, the air bitter with forebodings of winter; and then, the roads! Winding chan- nels of a mud in which, at places, olio could drown, black, adhesive as tar. Before us, as we rode, the story of the retreat from Druskenild, its agony and its cost, was plain to read; it was scrawled in staring letters of wreck- age all across those wet and daunting miles, This Question Is Often Asked By the Pepsi's. The query, so often asked in the papers, "What is the Navy doing?" is begining to make the navy people angry. One officer has answered in the following manner "It is, .aravatiu to hear the gg g unthinking person imply that we are. doing nothing. Herr Bailin, mana- ger of the Hamburg -American Line, says we are lurking in our harborw. Lot me say that from the first of August to the middle of November my ship has sailed 17,000 miles, and we have never been very far from the grand fleet. We are playing our own game, not the Germans'. The unthinking ask why we do not go in and attack Kiel, Wilhelmshaven. Cuxhaven and Heligoland. Not Mucic. We have our own plans, and the Germans are certainly not going to lure our splendid fleet into their mine -infested areas and under their fortresses, with the added danger of submarines. "We are nob out to fight fort- resses. We are after their ships, Guns are put into siklips so that they can be moved about, and the Ger- mans are not increasing their e8i- cienoy by remaining under the pro- tection of their forts. '1We are add- ing to our efficiency every day, tak- ing every opportunity for the prac- tice of gunnery, the use of torpe- does, and also battle tactics, prac- tising under every condition of wea- ther. As things stand, the seas are clear for British trade. Let, those who say we aro doing nothing ima- gine what would happen if we .were really doing nothing. What would become of our islands in'tlrat event "Our time will coma to get into the limelight. Meantime, 'we are Content to watch and wait.' Pat—Bridget is gone, .poor soul. 'Faith an' she was a good woman • she airways bit me wiel tate soft enti ef the mop, "' arrie ttoesn't seem to think so much of Jerk as she used to." "Why, she is all .the time talking about. him." "That's it; she is balking, not thinking." A father told his daughter van* if she learned to•eook he would give her a surprise. She learned the art, and he surprised her by discharging the cook, rt Guns Left Behind. A traction engine had been employ- ed to haul the great 42 -centimetre Krupp gun, afterwards fell into the Bands of the Russians, to the south of Augustowb- It had never come into action; before it could be brought up the German attack had been repulsed.. The great wheels of the traction engine, under its tons of weight, ate down into it like a buzz saw into soft timber; one could see behind the machine the slope it had carved in the sodden earth as It cut forward and down. Their time was short, for the Rua scans were on their heels and moving parallel with them on the sound road from Grodno; and they must of labor- ed inhumanly. But short of cutting the road down to the level of the en- gine and paving it, nothing could have availed; the black mud was their master. They still had the gun le save. it was here that began the tnartyrdc,n of all those bcrses whose carcases lay so thickly along the sides cf the way. The gun, with its mounting and its accessories. travelled, it seems, on three trucks; horse from the wagons were yoked to these in teams of ;Iffy and sixty pairs and they went forwrrd. Torment of the Ponies. Imagine that progress, through the Soft, unceasing rain, under the ever- present spur of the roar and throne of the firing in the rear and over the foot -clogging, wheel-gulfing mire of the way, while the terrible wagon whips hailed and flogged in a frenzy of haste, and the little commandeered horses lay against the collars, tailor- ing in torment till they died in a dual agony of effort. Every kilometre of progress was bought with the flesh of horses. We saw them, swollen, the crofts flapping from them in clouds as we came near, stiff legs protruding, They got the gun away, to lose it finally, in spite of all their striving, in the sodden woods by Augustowo. Whenever the road sloped up a trill, they stood in scores at the foot, where their teams had been requisitior_ 1 to take the gun up. There were hundreds of them by actual sober counting, in a re space of little more a than ten 71 plica. Most of them were. Russian four - wheeled farm carts, commandeered, like the horses, in the towns and vil- lages of h g the border; the Suwalki dis- trict alone was forced to furnish live hundred of them. Kitchens Abandoned, • I3ere and there one saw other ve- hicles, a field kitchen upset. an oc- casional lead -colored German army cart, and once a most lamentable old droschky, that archaic Victoria of the streets which is as near as Russia has yet come to a hansom. In a)1, an enormous mass of the furniture: of an army in the field, a commissariat nightmare; the sprawl and tangle of its wreckage in the mud was a monu- ment to failure and defeat. We were to have stayed for the night in Plaska, where, in spite of the Germans, there are still people living; but my companion had news of a camp further along the road, and we pushed on. We were up with it a little before midnight; its fires, nobly red in the night, beckoned us to it across the wet levels; it proved to consist of 60 Men and two officers, one of them a doctor on sanitary duty. They were working back along the road, bringing with them carts of quicklime, tidying up the country after the Germans, It was theirs to put out of sight all those dead horses we had passed, and dead men, too. Can a Shell Be Seen Coming. A soldier, writing hone from the front says:—"We can actually see them"—the Gelman ehells—"before they strike and have time to take cover and clod the splinters." Oh the other bend, however, s. shell is said to have quite a fascination about it. Several cases are on re- cord of men who, while being gifi-te alive to their dianger, and even cap- able of crying for (Help, have yet. been unable move out of the w n to v sty of .an approaohing shell, Many ayes have been lost as a result of thde shell-mesmer'i;lm. Tire inventor of rubber tips for pencils made a, fortune because of other people mistakes, •