1916-12-27 — Page 7

BLOCKADE TRICKS.

AND THOSE WHO SPOT" THEM.

This business of blockading is a fine whetstone for the wita. It keeps those of all parties engaged in it runners" and preventive men" alike-rubbed up to the keennem of a well-stropped hollow ground.

Anyone with six months experience on: either side should thereafter be able to hold his own against even a Cairo Greek, for he will know the whole grammar of guilefulness from simple verb to the most

abstruse declensions.

THE HONGKONG DAILY PRESS, WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 27TH, 1916.

OUR MEN IN CAPTIVITY.

THE NEW FOOD REGULATIONS.

(DY IAN MALCOLM, M..]

Early this year our authorities at home word urged to devise some scheme for the co-ordination of all efforts, whether col lective or individual, for supplying food and comforts to our prisoners in Ger many.

It was even then obvious that, consid ering the number of our imprisoned re- latives and friends, far too much food was leaving this country for Germany and that a great deal of money was being And even 90, Many ships' companies engaged in the wasted in empзequence. Search have during the past twenty there was plenty of evidence to show that seven month; been nequiring a knowledge while thousands of our friends were got of human nature which will make them ting far more food parcels than they exceedingly distrustful of that strangely-quired, other thousands were getting mixed compound for as long as they none at all. Knowing, therefore, that there was imminent danger of starvation where it is. Among those qualifying for a full arts degree in this in so many cases I, for one, rejoiced to university of rich experience are the read the new regulations recently issuet erew of our old friend rushalong, the by the War Office. discoverer, as you may remember, of rubber onions, copper ploughshares, and sundry other super-ingenious inventions of the blockade runners,

remain

Although its operations are so exten- jaive, the British people have but an indifferent knowledge of the work done by

Examination the

Service the

i

THE ANCRE FORTRESSES.

INGENIOUS DEFENCES OF

DIVION

Of all these important strongholds hardly a stone above ground was visible Even the trees that surrounded the villages have been ent off short by out shells. Pass on down the slope towards these villages. Better keep to the old trenches as far as possible, for the Boche still sends shells along. At length the tronches must be left, for you have come now to the old No Man's Land" which for two years, and till only a few days

THE FORTS OF VERDUN

A MATCH FOR MODERN GUNS. THY THE SPECIAL CORRESPONDANT OF THE “MORNING" POST;"]

Plodding through trenches, and over the crest of a hill we emerged at last to take a first bird's-eye view of the new The forts of Verdun have played so territory that has fallen into British glorious a part in the defence of that. hands. Straight before us lay the village fortress that the theory of the complete of Beaucourt; well to the right of us, uselessness of permanent fortifications, and across the Ancre, was the tiny prevalent at the moment of the first village of St. Pierre Divion, and away realization of the power of modern heavy to the left the fortress of Beaumont | artillery, certainly needs qualification: Hamel-one of the most important if forts have lost their offensive power, British captures in all this great Battle and it is generally agreed that big guns of the Somane.

are more secure and serviceable outsido) them than under the protection of the heaviest armoured turret, the exact position of which must inevitably be known to the enemy, yet the Verdun forts have proved themselves invaluable as shelters for men and machine-guns.

The few guns, moreover, that were left in them at the time of the German offen- 've played a useful rôle, and their te fences resisted the heaviest s hell to a surprising extent. There is a story of a turret sheltering a couple of 70's, which did remarkable execution among the enemy during an assault. The Germans rained shells upon it in the hope of silence ing the guns, which were holding up the whole of tacir attack. At last they scored a direct hit. Though the turret

Boches, they were not content with this out of netion. Unfortunately for the

success. They went on shelling the arret with the utmost vigour until they scored another direct hit. Again they failed to pierce the armour of the turret, and the concussion of the shell produced an undesired and unexpected effect. It accomplished what the guns' crews had been desperately trying to accomplish for themselves, and released the part of the machinery that had jammed. The result was that the 75's came into action again and resumed their work of killing Germans.

Search," as it is called by those engaged parents and relatives should be no longer a lemon, and lying snag in the soft held good it jammed, and the guns were

separated Briton and Boche. There are shell fragments everywhere, British and German. Here is a elip of five cartridges and a cap. But the stretcher-bearers have been "zlong, You cannot be sure as the rest of the story, Further along you stop at a queer little round thing made of iron, shaded like earth. Do not poke it with your stick. It is a hand-grenade, and they have violent habits when disturbed. Here, beyond, is a khaki handkerchief lying on the ground. The initials on its hem are J.G." Twenty yards further is a pack of cards scattered over the mud and chalk rock. The seven of diamonds has a hole drilled through it a clean round hole made by a bullet..

RELICS OF A VILLADE

كعبة

.

At first sight these regulations seemed harsh. It seemed unnecessary and red- to interfere with the admirable tepish organisations and individual efforts which, during the past two years, had managed to supply so many prisoners with food and comforts without which they would certainly have died of starve tion, It seemed especially hard that in it, or the "Blockade," to give the permitted to pick up their home-baked loaves and cakes and send them off to thing its popular title. They do not dear ones in captivity across the seas, know that bis vigilant force combs the and hopelessly unreasonable that "adop on frota chilly Iceland down to summer tors"-whose weekly parools were anxi latitudes, and that its unceasing enerously looked forward to and gratefully gies have created a sort of Liverpool in acknowledged should now be asked to a secluded port which rarely hold a ter alter the form of their generosity. The shant vessel before the war began, Still,

home-touch," the personal link, less do they know of the strange things seemed so all-important that one felt in- Jiscovered there in professedly inno- stinctively hostile to any official ukase ut bottoms" by the men who delve which ran counter to it, and which sub-

Go on past the jumble of trenches and ato the cargo of merchandise which these stituted something like Socialism for in-barbed wire and craters. You keep look

ing forward, the first village arry For the Admiralty handles this dividual effort.

Thus impressed I obtained permission approaches, for some sign of an end to business, and the Admiralty, being the to go thoroughly into the whole question this disorder, some cotsing of crater and Bost bashful of all our great State of the working of these new regulations hammock and shell pit and litter of war. I first visited a Verdun fort Inst Departments, says as little as possible at 4, Thurloc place, where Sir Starr There is none The only difference in the about what happens within its own do Jameson presides over the various de village itself is that bricks and stone and it and the complicated barbed wire en- January. Except for the treanebes round main, be those happenings good, bad, or partments of the Prisoners of Warhousehold goods are now added to this tanglements, it schroely differed from any otherwise.

Bureau. I am not ashamed to say that

vast waste heap that was once fair fields English fort in time of peace. Its slop I entered the door as a sceptic and that, and homes and human enterprise. after a searching and complete examina Here a chair leg, scorched at the end;ing ramparts were covered with green tion of the new rules and of the mass of there a piece of a clock, and there a grass, and it possessed a small draw correspondence to which they had given child's drinking mug, labelled in gold as bridge over a rather shallow most. The rise, I was absolutely converted to their

"A present from Boulogne-on-the Sea" entrance was built of massive concrete wisdom and necessity,

In one space littered with brick, and faced with stone, and the whole building recognizable as a former dwelling only by rose about fifteen feet or so from the I did not approach this subject quite the fact that a cellar, remains under it, level of the hilltop. As one passed new to the game,” I had already visit-

was a country woman's Sunday cape of through the gate one began to go down- It was hill along a narrow passage roofed over ed General Post Offices in England, Swit black silk and sequins of jet,

seen nearly new. zerland, and elsewhere, and had

But it enveloped now & with many feet of reinforced concrete. thousands-literally thousands of food sinister thing-the top boot of a Boche, The passage plunged down into yualted «Hullo, old chap, stop a minute; I'd parcels intended for our prisoners of war all rusty with blood, and part of the foot, galleries far below the ground level, like to have a talk with you," signalled in Germany falling to bite and incapable

Multiply by three this little scene where were the turrets constructed for Pustulong to the stranger, not in pre-of being forwarded for want of skilled have drawn and you have descriptions of the artillery of the fort. At one point} cisely that form of words, though just as packing. The sight was enough to make politely, for the British sailor is never angels weep. To think that so much self-villages of Beaumont Hamel, Beaucourt, course towards the outer siz

the outward appearance of the three the passage narrowed down and took sacrifice had been exercised in humble and St. Pierre Divion. These villages homes to save up bits of dripping, crusts are built in the old French manuer, squeezed my way round a right angle corner, bastioned with hundrade of sand. common in these parts, oyer "haves" or of bread, broken cigarettes, and what not in order that these should reach son or

vast underground cares with many rami bags, and found myself on a broad plat- brother or sweetheart in Germany, yet fications. Every nork and cranny of form aby the ramparts overlooking parked so badly, albeit by loving hands, these haves was used by the Germans as the counter round. The conical tops of that in the first rough-and-tumble of the places in which to hide from our storms the gun turrets rose from the grass of post the paper burst, the string came of shell fre Hoists and lifts, pulleys the ramparts, rather like unnatural undone, and the contents of a dozen par- and tackle were ready to lift to the sur Fungi cels fell in an inextricable jumble upon face in a moment's time the guns and the floor.

mortare and machine-guns.

But many of these occurrences are recorded in the logs of such craft as Pusalong, whence might be extracted an exceedingly entertaining narrative of one phase of the war at sen.

*

*

Pushalong was shoving her grey nose through the ebill, gale driven spray in latitudo blank, longitude ditto, when the look-out reported a vessel in sight.

THE PRISONER SUPTERS.

T

rude until rudeness becomes necessary. "Certainly, glad meet you

to (though she was not), replied the stranger in effect, knowing quite well that if she answered otherwise Fushalong wouli **furn nasty" and do unpleasant things, As the two vessels neared one another and stopped for their talk, Pushalong dropped her sea-bost, which pulled across to the stranger and landed the customary

armed party of inquisitive men upon. And who suffered? the prisoner. her decks. The officer from Pushalong know of cases in which quite innocent but in charge of these examined the stranger'a ignorant persons had concealed; in loaves papers. These appeared all right, general and other eatables, messages which could farge not contraband, and so on. But not otherwise have reached their destina the officer knew the deceptiveness of out- tion; also of enemies of our country. ward appearance. A burglar may look masquerading as adopters of fictiti-looking could be imagined. Whence did just like a Baptist deacon and a Baptist ous prisoners, who used the same sort deacon may look like a burglar. Nature of means to convey information for delights in suck tricks of physiognomy. which the German Government would Also, cargo may seem non-contraband on have been profoundly grateful. The re the manifest and be quite otherwise salt was that, either in England or in Germany, cakes and cheeses were cut up when you come to look at it. The officer by the censors and all sorts of eatables decided to look at it. For a time the pierced (and so destroyed) to make sure examination revealed no causa. for that nothing contraband was contained suspicion. Then the party came to within them. Again, who suffered the pile of bags.

prisoner. In all the foregoing cases it is the prisoner, eagerly awaiting bis parcel, who stands to lose by the old lack of organisation, and it is in his interent alone that the new regulations have been

*

made.

I

been wooded, making the journey at least and down along the slopes that had once

What's in these!" ** Beans."

Open one. One was opened and it contained beans sure 'onough; such very benny beans that they could not be mistaken for anything else. But that officer had conducted "searches" before, and in the course of them come across such odd things that be know the fallacy of "seeing is be lieving. Anyway, the last thing he was prepared to believe was the unsupported from Switzerland or Denmark; his other made, and the passages from the tunnel pile of sandbags narrowed the doorway to testimony of his own eyes.

**Try another," he ordered. Another bag was opened. *Now empty some others and shake the bag up

Under them every prisoner of war in Germany, whether military or civilian |will receive three parcels of food and comforts per fortaight; enough to "keep him going" comfortably even if the Ger mans were not to feed him at all! Bread in sufficiency will reach him every week parcels will vary in contents but not in quantity or quality; when he requires clothing in addition he will be sent it, and if he is an invalid appropriate medi- cines and foods will reach him regularly.

arink

0-CEDAR

MOPS AND

THE

POLISH.

O-CEDAR MOP

is a Mop, Broom and Duster

All in One.

It Absorbs and Removes

and

Dust and Dirt, Imparts a Polish

Woodwork.

Cleans

to

Floors, Furniture, Walls, Marble, Glass, etc., and will not Scratch the Finest Surface.

LARGE ROUND

MOPS

PRICE $3.50 EACH.

TRIANGLE MOPS PRICE $2.25 EACH.

A Demonstration will be given with

h every Mop sold.

O-CEDAR POLISH.

An Ideal Furniture Polish Cleans and Polishes All Polished Surfaces, Removes Dirt from Paint, Cleans Leather Upholstered Furniture.

Bize

12 Ounce

Quart

Gallon

PRICE $1.15 $2.25 $5.75

Whiteaway, Laidlaw & Co., Ld.,

20, Des Vœux ROAD, HONGKONG.

Grand Prize of Honour Panama-Pacific International Exposition SAN FRANCISCO, 1915

ASAHI-BEER

A WEIND EXPERIENCE....... I have just visited Verdun fort, for A VAST UNDERGROUND FORTRESS. many months in the first line of the Let us cross the river by one of the defence, which was built on exactly the little wooden bridges that replace the same model as that which I saw last stouter bridges destroyed by our shell January. There was no more motoring fire, and look at the little village of St.up to that fort, even after the capture Pierre Divion. Nothing more innocent Document. The way to it led through the Germans put up their great fight for an exceedingly muddy communication this place? There seemed cothing, stand trench, which wound and zigzagged "up ing; nothing left of their front trenches, which lie battered, shapeless,

But down by the riverside are four three times as long as it would have been curious openings in the hillside. They in the open, where the shells were falling. lead into a network of tunnels and As for the fort, I could hardly recog chasms that form the biggest under nze it perfectly in keeping was it ground fortress taken in this war. Five with the surrounding desolation. A low hundred yards deep into the hillside the hummock of mud in a chaos of muldy workings go, and then comes a cross holes, it had retained only the essential:. tunnel like the top of a letter T. One all the superfluous had been carried away arm of this T runs, 200 yards under by high explosives and shivered in stoms ground; the other arm probably does the into the earth. On such ground there same. From each arm of these tunnels was no need of wie entanglements: there there are offshoots containing rooms and was not space between the shell holes saites of rooms innumerable. The whole to give passage way. Vanished was the place was shelter for men and stores andÌ most and the drawbridge; the grass of More than this, the tunnel was the ramparts had long ago been ground connected by shafts with the upper 'nto the mud. All that was left was the ground, not in the village itself, but on the hill creet behind it. Here were more pile of old iron and waste metal that concrete entrance, which had disgorged a German trenches, carefully and strongly made a hideous heap before it. A great below led directly into them. Thus the Germans, when attacked in their lower keep back the flying shell splinters, and trenches down in the village, had only as one approached one discovered that to retire to their cave to be able to get there were men standing there watching to their second line of tranches in a pur eumbrone advance with smiles of VALUE OF THE PERSONAL LINK.

commanding position above, whence they amusement. At first they had been invis. Think over this, those of you who are could pour down a deadly fire uponible, since, mudeontod, they had been in- A stalwart bluejacket did as instructed writing daily to Sir Jameson's commit anyone approaching their old trenches distinguishable from the all-enveloping Then, thrusting his hand into the bag, be tee and who are saying: "If I can't

below. Looking at the place, you marvel mud, nor did they venture out into the drew it out filled with beans." Sort send what I choose to my son or to my that any troops should have proved equal open, but kept warily back within reach ing these over in his palm he picked up adopted prisoner, 1 won't send anything to the task of taking it.

of cover ready to disappear at the first one and without a word honded it to the at all." Think of the hundreds of Down by the riverside Germaans tie warning note of an approaching shell. officer, who put the "bean between his prisoners who get no parcels now, who dead at the doors of their cavern. The neighbourhood of a fort near the toeth.

have no relatives and no "fairy god-Perhaps they were guards. Inside the enemy is not a healthy place in which toained on that hill-top in thousands, H'm-rubber," he remarked-and mothers to send them parcels; think of cavern is every sign of a surprise and

take the air, unless cover is pear at hand. many of them of the largest calibre, but rabber it was. More than half those the prisoner song and husbands of poor hurried departure; half-eaten alices of "beans were made of it-beautifully folk, whose parcels are perforce so scanty bread, food on a plats, overcoats hanging

they had only succeeded in pulverising horse might have that, if they arrive at all, they can hard-on a door, top boots anmuddied standing galleries was as bare and unscarred as smooth green glacis of the ramparts to The passage that led to the underground the unessential. They had torn the mude, too. been, deceived by them until ho got them ly stem the pangs of hunger. And, above together in a corner. And at the points before the German agault,

all, let the noble army of "adopters into his mouth. These:" beans "did not

on the bill where the passages from the

It was pieces and wrecked a turret or two from remember that the Germans have en- cavern lead into the trenches there a always a chilly cheerless place, and the which the guns had scarcely disturbed the get to Germany, and thus waa misap-

nounced that they will not deliver "god- dead Germans, too. There is not much noise of the ventilators that were being life of the garrison below, The French plied ingenuity once again foiled of its

mothers' parcels to prisoners if they doubt that so quick was the attack on the turned by hand moaned like the wind on soldiers there did not oven hear the roar sim by the astuteness of our "Search."

loave England after December 1st. You, posts, both above and below, that the a mountain peak. There were huge stacks of the explosions. Only sometimes a shell therefore, have no choice bat to support cavern was isolated, and such men as of broad beside the wall, and a glance fred more sccurately than usual would the new War Office regulations, which had not left it were caught in a trap. It through one of the side doors discovered make the whole fabric tremble as if it alme, if followed, will prevent your was a caso either of surrender or of being stock of provisions, so that the garrison had been an earthquake, prisoner-friend frora starving and will blown up. The Germans surrendered. would want for nothing even if com-

In the defence of Verdun these forts, ensure that every other British prisoner Reuter.

munication with the rear were for a time so far from being useless, were invalu- is fed.

interrupted.

able. They formed ideal shelters at this The galleries themselves were as bare very points where shelters were most donor, so that the prisoner may know

As the passage, but on that cold. October needed, and, as the Germans learnt again One day Pushalong overhauled a vessel

from whom it comes and to whom his morning they were divinely warm. There and again to their cost, they provided in ballast. She had a lovely lot of sand

postcard of acknowledgment should be were men playing cards by the fitful admirable lurking places for machine in her "bottom" quite a littlo seashore

After all, the great thing, the para-light of a guttering candle, and talking in guns If their upper works succumbed that you stroll about upon st your ease.

w tones of the war and the great attack to a long-sustained bombardment by LADIES One of the Pushalongs did stroll over it, and he thought it smelled oily. Fortb are, as it were, snapping & home tie." everyone of them--shall be fed and well at had won back Donaumont. In the heavy shells, their underground galleries oured into, and Be reassured that is not so indeed. This fed. As decent patriots we meant fort, and he showed us on the maps, mout, after all its vicissitudes and the with the saud was

inner gallery was the Commander of the retained all their value. Even in Donau- Prisoners of War Committee is essential although the "Search" did not openly a human organisaion, composed of that our particular prisoners shall be marked with many coloured lines and tersine pounding to which it has been

gusher," they struck oil" very richly. There were bundreds of gallons very human beings with friends and rela- nourished as see choose, if that demand signe, that hung on the walls the post subjected for months by first the Ger-

tives in captivity like

and then the French guns, the of it beneat's that sand. Any prospector know the value of the ourselves. They involves the starvation of others. These tious captured and the French advance

new regulations assure the full nutrition The galleries of the fort had resisted be-galleries are still for the most part intact, who could find an equal quantity in an and they have decreed that every parcel of all; and therefore I most heartily com-yond expectation the heaviest German and it was in one of them that the equal area of any held ashore might sent by the Central Committee or by a mend this new scheme, which I am cou-shells. There was not a crack in the artillery officer who, after the evacuation justifiably regard himself as a possible Itegimental Care Committes to a prisonvinced will prove of inmense value to ponderous concrete blocks that formed of the fort by the Germans, took refuge rival of John D. Rockefeller. JACKSTAFF or in Germany shall bear the name of the the health and well-being of our prisoners the ceiling and the walls. Shells had there with his men, installed himself, and in the Daily Matt.

(Continued at foot of ment Column.) and captives.

(Cossinned at foot of next Column.)

*

Pushaiong's log would tell you also of floating oil-field though you might think such a freak of nature never existed. And your thought would be cor- rect in so far that the field" was the creation not of nature but of art. Its discovery came about in this way.

JA

But how well I know your feeling- that you hate the idea of giving up your labour of love of the last two years and handing over the care of your prisoner, be he husband or son or brother or friend, to the tender mercies of an abstract semi official association. You feel that

iz

personal lin

you

sent.

mount necessity, is thas our prisoners-----

that as an axiom. We must not demand

THE UNDERGROUND GALLERIES.

Was captured.

SOLD EVERYWHER

APIOLINE

(CHAPOTEAUTY

Fur inactional trombica, delay, pain Sano those irregularities pesnilar to

the w Dessertbed by the highest French M điểm authorities and superior to Tasey, stool Drops and Penny royal GRAFOTKAUT, S'eno Viricans, Pusto. Maid by a Chambata,