The Illustrated War News, Number 21, Dec. 30, 1914

Chapter 1

Chapter 12,662 wordsPublic domain

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The Illustrated War News.

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THE GREAT WAR.

In reviewing the events of the last week throughout the world-wide area of war, let us begin with the Dark Continent, where everything went in our favour--very brilliantly so. First of all, then, we may now be said to have completed our conquest of the German Cameroon country by taking possession of the whole of the railway which runs northward from Bonabari, and is now in the hands of our troops. A similar fate is reserved, at no distant date, for German South Africa, against which General Botha--a man no less brave and dashing as a soldier than sagacious as a statesman--is preparing to lead a conquering force. Having stamped out the rebellion within the Union itself--crushing it literally like a beetle--he is now addressing himself to the task--a harder one, perhaps, but still certain of achievement--of making an end of the bad neighbourhood of the Germans in the vast region forming the Hinterland of Lüderitz Bay, which is already in our possession, and rendering it impossible for them in the future to intrigue from that quarter against the peace and stability of the Union. The court-martialling and prompt execution at Pretoria of the rebel leader, Captain Fourie, shows what the Union Government is minded to do _pour décourager les autres_. The rebellion was promptly and energetically suppressed--though not without a Union loss of 334, including more than 100 deaths; while in German South Africa, the casualties had also risen to a total of some 370. The rebels had more than 170 killed, over 300 wounded, and 5500 prisoners--which was thus a very creditable bit of work, as brilliant as it was brief, in the rounding-up of rebels against the unity of the Empire.

Quite of a piece with the doing of this job in South Africa was the disposal of another overt enemy against our authority at the other extremity of the Dark Continent--in the person of the Khedive, Abbas II., who has now been replaced by Prince Hussein Kamel Pasha as the nominal Sultan of Egypt--under our protection and power. No change of the kind was ever brought about with so much statesmanlike wisdom and such little friction, or with so much hearty approval from all sides--except, of course, that of the Turks and their German backers, for whom the change of regime, effected as it was by a simple stroke of Sir Edward Grey's masterly pen, was a most painful slap. The exchange of messages between King George and Prince Hussein--one promising unfailing support, and the other unfailing allegiance--completed the transaction, one of the greatest triumphs of British statesmanship, compared with which the recent statecraft of the Germans is mere amateur bungling. Marshal von der Goltz Pasha, who has now exchanged his Governorship of Belgium for the position of chief military counsellor on the Bosphorus, will find it harder than ever--with his rabble army under Djemal Pasha--to "liberate" from the British yoke the people of Egypt, who have already shown that they no more yearn for such emancipation than our loyal fellow-subjects in India. At Constantinople it was given out that the _Messudiyeh_, sunk by one

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Christmas celebrations in the Navy were naturally curtailed this year, but even in time of war the festival is observed to some extent, under the limitations caused by the necessity of being ready for immediate action. That the Navy did not allow Christmas festivities to interfere with duty is shown by the brilliant air-raid on Cuxhaven on Christmas morning. The Grand Fleet which keeps its silent watch on the seas, under Admiral Jellicoe, did not, we may be sure, relax any of its vigilance. One of the Christmas customs in the Navy is to decorate the mastheads with holly, mistletoe, or evergreens. The mess-room tables are also decorated, and the officers walk in procession through the messes, the Captain sampling the fare.--[_Photos. by Newspaper Illustrations and Alfieri._]

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of our submarines in the Dardanelles, had simply been the victim of a "leak"; but so serious was this little "rift within the lute" that its author, Lieut.-Commander Holbrook, R.N., was awarded a V.C. for his splendid deed of daring--a very different kind of act from the German bombardment of undefended towns on our East Coast, which caused our First Lord of the Admiralty to write to the Mayor of Scarborough--and his words deserve to be here repeated and recorded--that "nothing proves more plainly the effectiveness of British naval pressure than the frenzy of hatred aroused against us in the breasts of the enemy.... Their hate is the measure of their fear.... Whatever feats of arms the German Navy may hereafter perform, the stigma of the baby-killers of Scarborough will brand its officers and men while sailors sail the seas."

Other attempts at "frightful frightfulness" on the part of these "baby-killers" were a couple of aeroplane raids--of which the base was probably Ostend--carried out on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day respectively--against Dover and Sheerness. It must be owned that they were decidedly daring, yet in the nature of damp-squib affairs, as it turned out. In the case of Dover, the bomb dropped was probably intended for the Castle--a pretty conspicuous target, though all it did was to disturb the soil of a cabbage-garden, and excite the pursuit of several of our own air-craft, which lost their seaward-soaring quarry in the fog brooding over the Channel; while in the case of the Sheerness invader, on Christmas Day, which made its appearance just as the visitors at Southend over the water were about to sit down to their turkey and plum-pudding--little dreaming of the extra dish of enjoyment which was thus to be added to their menu--it was at once tackled, as at Dover, by some of our own airmen and pelted with shot, being hit three or four times; though this aerial intruder also managed, in the mist, to show a clean pair of heels, or wings, and make off eastward. These were the German replies to our bomb-dropping raids on Düsseldorf and Friedrichs-hafen, and intended to be a foretaste of what we may expect in the shape of German "frightfulness" as prompted by the "insensate hatred" referred to by Mr. Churchill.

Daring enough in themselves, those German visitations seemed insignificant by comparison with the raids which were being carried out almost simultaneously on the other side of the sea by our own naval airmen. For while the German aeroplanist was helping to dig a cabbage garden at Dover, one of our Squadron-Commanders--R.B. Davies, R.N.--from a Maurice-Farman biplane was much more profitably engaged in dropping a dozen bombs on a Zeppelin shed at Brussels--causing "clouds of smoke" to arise therefrom--most probably from the flames of the incendiarised air-ship.

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The sea-planes came into great prominence, for the first time during the war, on Christmas Day, when seven of them attacked German war-ships lying in Schillig Roads, off Cuxhaven. The attack started from a point in the vicinity of Heligoland, and the air-craft were escorted by a light-cruiser and destroyer force, together with submarines. The enemy put up a fight by means of two Zeppelins, three or four bomb-dropping sea-planes, and several submarines. Six out of the seven pilots returned safely--three were re-embarked by our ships, and three were picked up by British submarines. Flight-Commander Francis E.T. Hewlett, R.N., was reported missing. In our first photograph a sea-plane is being conveyed to her parent ship; in the second and third, sea-planes are being hoisted aboard.--[_Photos. by S. and G._]

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But that was nothing to the Christmas Day feat of seven of our sea-planes--one for every day of the week--which, accompanied by light cruisers and destroyers, with several submarines, made a daring and unparalleled attack on Cuxhaven, at the mouth of the Elbe, and several war-ships lying at anchor there--unparalleled, by reason of the fact that this was the first "combined assault of all arms" known to the sea--namely, from the air, the water, and from under the water. Both at Yarmouth and Scarborough the German bombarding cruisers were so nervously afraid of being caught in the act that they may almost be said to have only fired their guns and then run away again. But our triple flotilla at the mouth of the Elbe spent a deliberate three hours in the performance of its task, and then calmly withdrew with only one of the daring pilots missing. So far, it was the most thrilling episode of the war, and must give our enemies "furiously to think," in addition to furnishing them with much more for the nourishment of their hate. Of this insensate hatred against us in the hearts of the German people--and all because we have "queered their pitch," or crossed their long-cherished schemes for the destruction of our Empire--the most furious exponent is the _Kölnische Zeitung_, or _Cologne Gazette_, as we generally call it--which may be described, on the whole, as the most authoritative organ of the Fatherland--or the _Times_ of Germany, but always with a difference. The curious anomaly is that the seat of this powerful journal should be so far away from the capital--at Cologne. There is an old story--known to tourists who read their guide-books--about the "Three Kings of Cologne," but now this story has just received a pendant which gives anything but satisfaction at Cologne itself or anywhere else in Germany.

This was the recent meeting, not at Cologne, but at Malmö, of the three Kings of Scandinavia--Denmark, Sweden, and Norway--who lunched, and dined, and debated together for several days, when it was at last announced to the world at large (and Germany in particular) that "their deliberations had not only consolidated the good relations between the three Northern

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Both the French and British troops have made the best of things in the siege-warfare of the trenches, and out of an initial condition of misery have managed to evolve a considerable amount of comfort in many parts of the front. Ingenious French engineers, for example, have constructed warm shower-baths, hair-dressing saloons, and similar conveniences, while the British "Eye-Witness" was able to write recently of our own lines: "The trenches themselves are heated by braziers and stoves and floored with straw, bricks and boards. Behind them are shelters and dug-outs of every description most ingeniously contrived." The above French cartoon, which is from "La Vie Parisienne," is headed "La Guerre des Taubes et des Taupes" (moles).

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kingdoms, but that an agreement had also been reached concerning the special questions raised"--a result which must have been anything but agreeable to the War-Lord of Potsdam, who had been thirsting for _Weltmacht_, or world-dominion, and casting about to pave the way for this result by absorbing the minor States of Northern Europe--as a shark would open its voracious jaws to swallow down a shoal of minnows, or other small fry. That this was a prominent plank in the platform of German policy must be clear to all who have read the diplomatic revelations of the last few months; but now the "Three Kings of Scandinavia," going one better than their storied colleagues of Cologne, have shown that they are as obtuse to the blandishments of Berlin as the journalists of New York and Chicago.

According to all accounts, the Allied position in the west, especially the British section thereof, is as "safe as the Bank of England," to use the words of one of our officers already quoted; and though the Kaiser, recovered from his illness, has again returned to the front--or, at least. the distant rear of the front--he does not seem to have much refreshed the offensive spirit of his armies. Nevertheless, the French _communiqués_ have suffered from no great diminution in the daily records of sporadic trench-fighting all along the Allied line--fighting of a fluctuating, if on the whole favourable, kind for the strategic plans of General Joffre, as to whom, one German officer in Belgium said that he wished to God his country had such a War Lord, seeing that, apart from Marshal Hindenburg, all their Generals were only worthy of disdain.

In a telegram to his aunt, the Dowager Grand Duchess of Baden, only daughter of the old Emperor William, the Kaiser gave "God alone the glory" for a grand victory which was supposed to have been achieved by Hindenburg over the Russians in front of Warsaw--a victory which caused Berlin to burst out into bunting and braying and comparisons to Salamis and Leipzig in its momentous results. But this acknowledgment of the Kaiser to the Lord of Hosts, "our old ally of Rossbach"--which must surely have inspired Hindenburg himself with a feeling of jealousy and sense of soreness--turned out to have been altogether premature, and of the nature of shouting before they were out of the wood.

For a fortnight or so the fighting in Poland continued to be of a very confused kind, the telegrams from both sides being most contradictory, but on the whole the advantage seemed to remain with the Russians, who recorded their victories in very striking figures of killed and captured during their defence of several rivers tributary to the Vistula on its left bank. Hindenburg the redoubtable--the only General worth a rap (or a "damn," as Wellington would have said), according to the German officer already quoted--promised to let the Kaiser have Warsaw as a Christmas present; but, according to all present appearances, he is no nearer the capital of Russian Poland than his comrade von Kluck (who is now said to have been superseded) was to Paris on the day of his being tumbled back from the Marne.

London: December 28, 1914.

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