Avenouan nine years have elapsed, since the event; the writer "recalls with complete vividness the solemn hush which passed through his battalion when its first casualty occurred in France. The battition bad been only a day or two in the country and had been pushed up to the front to be broken in 0 that it might take part in the Battle of Neuve Chapelle. By platoons the men were being inaugurated into trench life under the tutelage of a hard-fighting regular battalion, and the lead~ ing contingent had hardly been more than afew hours in the" trenches when the first casually ocourred, a young, handsome and particularly gay' fellow bo-ing killed by a sniper. To those who had never been face to face with warfare before, the thing was preposterous, "outrageous, in fact almost ineredible—a man after months of training to die before there was time for him to strike a blow for his country. Tu sector, too, which was at the moment quiet, although everybody knew that in a few days i¢ would blaze forth into battle, and then, of course, everybody. would expect casualties, but, in their ignorance of modern conditions, imagined it would be in glorious mad charge against th enemy, Tt was in its way a rude i troduction to war as waged in this century, although by no means so drastic as many others went through. Perhaps the fact that it was one solitary tragedy created all the more profound: impression, hence the dread solemnity ofthe ovcasn. Tu comparison with the worl the "wor machine -whiah "had events of 1914 the canna was been set: i motion through the
insignificant, and by' the. time that the lists of" killed and wounded reached—stupendoux figures, when whole companies and even battalions disappeared in the carnage of the Somme and Ypres, those who were pro-sent at tht first incident were burdened campaigners and took a different view of casualties, From the nature of the case these losses represented to the battalion or company commander a grievous decrease in his fighting power and spells of hard training to bring the drafte taking their place up to concert pitch. Tu this there was no suggestion that, men were merely cannon fodder, but the ease was that the war find to be won that everything had to be saorificed to winning it, otherwise the liberty of nations which prized freedom above ull else was to disappear.
Though, as all know too well to-day, war is the hardest rackmasters, making sieves to duty of those engulfed in it, yet it has a. strange humanizing influence. Men made the most is readily comprehended from a remark made by the German ex-Chancellor, von Bethmann-' Hollweg, who complained that] the Treaty of Versailles had! Balkanized Wurope. Tf 9 great Separatist movement were firther to Balkanize the German Reich it would surely} ho a more serious matter. This is not a view based ea any} pes sentimental sympathy for Germany bat a knowledge of how! small states through their: squabbles with equally stall neighbours have the knack of! dragging big Powers into their quarrels and thus - promoting! worldwide conflagrations. From tis point of view, if none other, many with goods to sell had_to a great extent ceased doing buhlness, for they realized that it was "ally to sell an article for al one day when next day million would not pay of a penny postage st goods for sale in the shops disappeared, and the country sect ed bare of supplies. The apance of the rentenmark with} tations and guarantees altered this immediately, and even Germans were sit prised to find how great the supplies of nece-sane: n the country The result as been resumption of ordinary)
via return, in some measure at least, t normal Soochow Creek with its thon-sands of boats and mazes of joining rookeries in which a thief disappear like the rabbit in} mnjuror's hat? Recently the ommmis.ioner of Customs received word from Peking of an additional grant of Tis. with provision for an extra hulk and two more steam launches and it is proposed to hi River Police up to a force of seventeen foreigners and (went eight Chinese. But this is inferior to the figure at which the shipping companies put the minimum force requisite, in a letter addressed to the General Chamber of Commerce two years Feng Yucbsiang,—the]
tian soldier, has personally urged President Tsao Kun to appoint Ge, Chang" Shao-tseng, premier in the last Li Yung-hung. Cabinet, High "Military Tnspecting Commnissione Shensi and Sinkiang, Anhui, has telegraphed to Peking "requesting. the Government fo approach. the Diplomatic Corps with view to. expelling From. foreign settlements or resting any oF all persons opposed To the Ceibral Government, but the Government hae replied. star ing that they fear the Diplomatic Corps will refuse to take: action Tinigas they receive. explicit details of the "offenders." intimate and splendid friendships with people they never would have met in their ordinary civilian life, and when these disappeared in' the maelstrom there was deep sorrow. The leaders of the armies knew that every operation they initiated would result in death and bloodshed, but they had their duty to d, though when the strain and stress of battle were over there must have been many scenes similar to when Wellington shog tears on being " presented with the casualty list of Waterloo. They likewise had to mourn their friends who went West iv these titanic encounters. The [supreme tragally was not, how-'
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.