قراءة كتاب The Illustrated War News, Number 15, Nov. 18, 1914
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WOUNDED: LIEUT.-COMMANDER A.P. MUIR.
When the "Niger" was torpedoed, Captain Muir was on the bridge and was severely injured by the explosion, but remained at his post till every officer and man had left the ship. He was taken ashore at Deal in a boat and had to be at once placed in hospital.—[Photo. by Russell.]
Most bitterly hated, but at the same time most formidable—as the Germans themselves now generally admit, and hence all those tears of rage—hinc illae lacrymae. Even when the Prussian Guards—not to speak of the vaunted
Brandenburgers and Bavarians—can make no impression on the British lines in Belgium, it should at last break in upon the German General Staff that they are somewhat out in their calculations. The word "contemptible" is never used now in relation to Sir John French's army, and it will be used still less when this army shall have been reinforced by the million of men apart altogether from the Territorials which are now under training to supplement it, while a further million has now, in turn, been asked for and will be cheerfully raised, with the help of the additional vote of credit for £250,000,000—which was just about the cost of the Boer War, and £25,000,000 more than the French indemnity of 1870—which will be willingly granted by Parliament for the conduct of a war that is said to be costing us about £7,000,000 a week. When a young man throws all his soul into his training and ardently wants to become a soldier, his progress will be at least three times as quick as that of the dull, driven conscript; and that is why Lord Kitchener has told us that the new million-man'd army which popularly bears his name, though it might just as well be called after the King—has already been making a wonderful advance towards field-efficiency.
SUNK BY A GERMAN SUBMARINE IN THE DOWNS: H.M.S. "NIGER."
The "Niger," a torpedo-gunboat of 810 tons, built in 1892, was torpedoed by a German submarine while lying off Deal about noon on the 11th, and foundered. The Admiralty stated: "All the officers and 77 of the men were saved; two of the men are severely and two slightly injured. It is thought there was no loss of life."—[Photo. by L.N.A.]
The English writer of one of the many war-books now before the public—"The German Army From Within," by one who has served in it as an officer, tells us that he calculates one of our "Tommies" to be at least equal to three "Hans Wursts"; and when the personal equation is taken into account—the value of individual character and initiative—the estimate will not seem to be exaggerated. In fact, it has been proved to be correct by the opinion of all our best judges in the field itself, as well as by the results of the fighting when the odds against us have been invariably three to one, in spite of which we have always managed, not only to maintain our ground, but also to encroach on that of our antagonists.
Hence it follows that a so-called "Kitchener" army of a million men ought to have for us a military value of at least three millions as against the Germans—the more so since their best first-line troops have already been used up, and replaced with beardless boys and most corpulent greybeards. This is not a fanciful description; it corresponds with the reports sent home by "Eye-Witness" at Headquarters and other reliable observers; while there is an absolute consensus of statement that our soldiers enjoy a commissariat system which is at once the admiration of their French friends and the sheer envy and despair of their German foes. The fact alone that our men are better found and better fed than the enemy gives them an advantage over and above their three-to-one equivalent of the individual kind.
[Continued overleaf.
THE ILLUSTRATED WAR NEWS, NOV. 18, 1914—7
The devastating effect of shell-fire on human habitations is brought out with appealing effect by the photograph which we give above of the scene in one of the ill-fated Belgian townships on the frontier of West Flanders. Wrecked and ruined houses with their walls leaning over and tottering, about to fall in ruin, and the heaps of littered débris in the street tell a fearful tale of what the havoc from a bombardment by heavy projectiles means for the hapless inhabitants of the place. The tremendous force of the impact with which the shells crash down is shown at the same time by the man seen in the foreground of the photograph standing up to the waist in one of the gaping cavities in the ground that the shells make where they strike. In some of the houses they smash through from roof to cellar.—[Photo. by Illus. Bureau.]
8—THE ILLUSTRATED WAR NEWS, NOV. 18, 1914.
TOURING IN GERMANY WITH THE PRINCE OF WALES: THE LATE MAJOR CADOGAN, THE PRINCE'S EQUERRY, WHO HAS BEEN KILLED IN ACTION.
Major the Hon. William Cadogan, son of Earl Cadogan, and Equerry to the Prince of Wales, was killed while commanding the 10th Hussars in place of the Colonel, who had been wounded. Major Cadogan had been sharing in the work of the infantry in the trenches. He served in South Africa, and last year accompanied the Prince of Wales, who travelled as the "Earl of Chester," on a visit to Germany, where our photograph was taken.—[Photograph by Illus. Bureau.]
Besides, they have sources of inspiration—have our "Tommies"—denied to their Teutonic antagonists. General von Kluck, Commander of the First German Army, has described a visit of the dread War Lord to the line of the Aisne "behind the line of fire"; and the "Hochs" with which he was greeted by a Prussian Grenadier regiment. But what
are those guttural "Hochs" compared with the ringing cheers which were evoked by the presence of Lord Roberts on the occasion of his last visit to his old comrades-in-arms of the Indian Army, now confronting those Prussian Grenadiers on the line of the Yser? When Lord Roberts was made a Peer, after his march from Cabul to Candahar, he chose as his heraldic supporters a Gurkha and a Gordon Highlander, who had done so much to help him on to victory; and it is pretty certain that he would have desired no more congenial and appropriate manner of death than he has found, at the age of eighty-two, as an inspiring visitor to the lines of the gallant troops of all kinds whom he himself had so often led to victory. It has been said that no man can be called happy until his death, and certainly no one was ever more felicitous in the manner of his end than the veteran hero, the blameless "Bayard" of the British Army, who has well been called one of Ireland's greatest Englishmen.
Yet his name will continue to serve as an inspiration to the Army which adored him; and doubtless his last moments were soothed by the thought that the soldiers whom he so fervently loved had just added to their laurels by the brave repulse on the Yser of two Brigades, or a Division, of the boasted Prussian Guards, forming the