http://www.thetimes.co.uk/past-six-days/2017-03-03/register/a-despicable-offence-dg862k37b
March 3, 1917
A despicable offence
Four out of the five defendants in the “White City” case have been convicted and sentenced to imprisonment. They are remarkably fortunate, in our opinion, to have escaped with the penalties imposed upon them. There are countries, as the Judge told them, where they might have been shot.
The crime of which they have been found guilty is technically conspiracy to defeat the Military Service Act and another statute, but, in substance, it is conspiracy to weaken our Armies for the sake of pecuniary gain. It is treachery to the national cause, and treachery which is both dangerous and base.
Three of these men were in the service of the Crown, two are doctors, and all are possessed of some education. Yet, at a time when every available man is needed in the trenches, they conspired together for money to keep those who bribed them away from service. A more heinous offence against the State, short of actual treason, it is hard to imagine. It seems to us to be infinitely more disgraceful than desertion or than cowardice in the face of the enemy.
Weakness, irresolution, temperament tempt men to these crimes. The penalty is exacted, and it is death. But while the men in the ranks may be summarily tried and shot for them, persons at home whose one object is to make a little money out of the war, and who do not shrink from corruption and from fraud in order to make it, have nothing worse to fear than ordinary civilian offenders. The fact that some of them do not seem conscious of the enormity of their offence aggravates its mischief.
We may hope that the particular fraud disclosed in the “White City” case is exceptional, but there is plenty of evidence that callous indifference to the public good and sordid covetousness of class, or personal gain still exist side by side with the keen and generous patriotism which the war has generally evoked.
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/past-six-days/2017-03-04/register/a-canadian-sergeants-gallantry-fxrl8s7zv
March 4, 1917
A Canadian sergeant’s gallantry
Several parties from a Manitoba battalion attacked the German trenches at different points along a 600 yards’ frontage. The objectives were successfully reached, all opposition was overcome, and for 10 minutes our men quickly and effectively carried out their allotted tasks. Nine dugouts which were evidently occupied, but from which the enemy refused to emerge, were destroyed. One mine shaft was discovered in which an engine was heard and in which several Germans were working or had taken shelter from our artillery fire. Sergeant Lloyd placed a large portable charge of explosives at the head of the shaft and, despite the danger which he knew he must himself incur, he lit the fuse and then sought to escape. But the terrific upheaval which followed was not only the explosion of the charge, but of the German mine itself, in which evidently a great quantity of explosives had already been placed. Masses of earth, some of which must have weighed several tons, were thrown into the air. The gallant Sergeant Lloyd was unfortunately buried beneath this avalanche, but the German front line at that point was blown to pieces and many of the enemy were killed.Twenty German dead were counted in the trenches and three unwounded prisoners were captured and brought back to our lines. These men were singularly small and of a very low order of intelligence. One of them had a glass eye. They belonged, indeed, to the “Bantam” Company of the 11th Bavarian Infantry Regiment. Our own casualties amounted to only 13.
An Ontario Battalion, in cooperation with another party from the Manitoba Regiment already mentioned, again raided the enemy trenches on Thursday afternoon. The Germans were manning their trenches more heavily than usual and made a stout resistance. They had evidently received orders to show greater resolution in the defence of their line. All of our parties, however, except one which was hold up by the fire of three machine-guns from the left, succeeded in entering the German trenches. Four occupied dugouts were treated in the usual manner, and some 35 of the enemy were killed. Within 24 minutes of the beginning of the raid our men were safely back in their own lines.
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/past-six-days/2017-03-06/register/within-sight-of-bapaume-86d0rb05n
March 6, 1917
Within sight of Bapaume
There may be ideas at home that the fighting before the Bapaume Ridge is of a mild sort, in which our men have an easy success. Such ideas are profoundly wrong. Our men certainly have their work cut out. But as for the German retreat, no matter what the Germans may say, it was ordered by the Higher Command because the loss of German life was becoming too terrible to be ignored even by them. It was ordered because our heavy, unremitting gunfire had become unendurable to their troops.Yesterday I went up among our outposts to within a very short distance of Bapaume. For some hours I worked my way over the enemy’s old ground which our shells had been pounding all the winter. Such a prospect of ultimate horror and woe could never be imagined, nor, I think, when at last one actually sees it in its stark and accusative challenge, even described. The most courageous pen would recoil from that task. When I came to the results of our own guns I was so unprepared to see that vision of a world where all was in final ruin, and where the many German dead lay waiting for the Day of Judgment, that I had no thought for my own safety. No wonder the German Command ordered a retirement: the best of men would have gone mad had they been kept in such a place much longer. Apparently each German was too anxious about his own frail tenure of life to be bothered about burying his comrades. Unless killed in the trench — when he was just thrown out — he was left where he fell. There they were, first in No Man’s Land, where they had been sacrificed since November last in hopeless counter-attacks, and from there they lay all over the broad belt back to Le Brieux. Our losses this winter have been nothing remotely resembling it.
For the first time I saw the work of those British batteries by which I had often stood in the south when they were in action, speculating as to what they really did. Here it was. The chocolate-coloured earth was heaped into steep waves of heavy mud. Prone figures in overcoats and full kit were everywhere melting into the aqueous muck; men who never relieved their comrades, or else fell there when returning for a rest. It was more dreadful than anything imagined by Dante.
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/past-six-days/2017-03-07/register/clubs-and-potatoes-wrvql0fjw
March 7, 1917
Clubs and potatoes
Lord Devonport had a further consultation yesterday with the Hotels and Restaurants Committee on the question of food economy in places of public eating.The potato queues become longer day by day. Yesterday outside greengrocers’ shops in many parts of London hundreds of women and children stood waiting their turn to be served, and found when their turn came that a pound or two was all they could buy. Some of them, indeed, thought themselves fortunate if they managed to get even that small quantity after going from shop to shop and joining in the scramble around the roadside barrows. The supplies which reached London were distributed at the railway termini, and none were offered at Covent Garden.
In addition to meatless days, London clubs are to adopt potatoless days. The conference of Managers of London Clubs took place at Brooks’s yesterday, Mr Albert Gray, CB, RC, in the chair. The following clubs were represented: Arthur’s, Boodle’s, Brooks’s, Garrick, Guards, Marlborough, St James’s, Travellers’, Turf, and White’s. Each club reported the steps taken to carry out the resolutions passed at the meeting of February 9. Every club had adopted Friday as a meatless day, one club (Arthur’s) adding a second on Tuesday.
The reports showed a reduction in the consumption of meat of from 25 per cent to 35 per cent. Further resolutions were passed to the following effect: (1) That all clubs should adopt Friday as a meatless day, and in case of two that Tuesday should be the other; (2) that potatoes be not served on Mondays and Thursdays; (3) that returns be used showing the total consumption of meat, bread, sugar, and potatoes in each week, the number of meals supplied, and the number of staff.
The Adelphi Hotel, Liverpool, has decided to eliminate potatoes from its menus on one day in each week.
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/past-six-days/2017-03-08/register/the-ravages-of-british-guns-wtpxd22nd
March 8, 1917
The ravages of British guns
In the account I have given of the dreadful evidence of German losses this winter on the Somme ground as I saw it between their old trenches and Le Barque, I have been at some trouble to verify that this is typical of his whole front there. It is typical. Officers who have been over the ground elsewhere tell me that the evidence of our punishment of the enemy’s late ground by guns this winter has surprised them. They knew it would be pretty bad. It is much worse than they expected.The vacated German positions are a shocking compost of clay, bodies, and rags. There were no communication trenches to the front line. These had been obliterated. Any roads leading to the front positions cannot be even recognized as roads. They are sloughs containing the bodies of men who were drowned, because such was their state of mind that they would rather take the chances in those sunken ways of bottomless mire and red pools than face the horrors of crossing the open. One large area to the west of where I crossed the country to our outposts has been named the Sahara by our soldiers.
A Staff officer, who went to a farnous position near Miraumont, told me that the result of the shelling there was indescribably hideous. “I had never seen anything so bad.” That is the view everyone takes who has been up to the front: “It could not possibly be worse” and “I know no means of conveying to others the sense that land gives an eyewitness of being not only the death of the world, but also its revolting dissolution.” Anyhow, it dare not be even attempted now.
Since I saw it I have not been able to get it out of my mind, though I have seen some rather ugly things in this war. And, remember, that when up there as far as you can see there is nothing else to be seen. And remember, further, that it was that appalling prospect which had to be faced by all the German troops on that front, whether they were returning or going in or revictualling and providing for their comrades. They had to face it. I understand now why we used to hear that it was usual for German troops to go in fear to the Somme front “with their tails down,” as our men phrase it. It must have ended in madness for some of them and depression and miserable fear for most.
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