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ITO SUCCEED LORD SELBORNE…

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ANZAC IN FHAHOE

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ANZAC IN FHAHOE THE MS PEOPLE liKE CLI R- 6WN. iSy Capt. C, E. W. Bean, Official Pre Si Representative with the Australian Forces.) British Headquarters Frayme. 'The cottage door is open to the night. Tooærft air of a beautitui evening follow- lng. on a glorious day brushes past one oito the rouen. As I stand here the night- ingale from a neighbouring garden is piping his long exquisite repeated note till the air seems full of it. I'ar a.way over the horizo-" is an incessant flicker r-f summed lightning, very faint but quite continuous. Under the nightingale's note :cn»s always a dull grumble, throbbing and bumping occasionally but seldom rfjite ceasing. Someone is getting it heavily down tbere-it is not our Aus- tralians; I think I know their direction. It was just such a glorious day as this one has been, one year ago, when this corps of untriaxl soldiers suddenly rushed into the nightmare of a desperate tight. At this moment of the night the rattle of riile fire was incessant all round the hills. Men were digging and firing and digging in a dream whih had continued since early dawn and had to continue for two more. days and nights before there was the first chance of rest. They were old soldiers within twenty-four hours, as their leader told th-em in an order which was circu- lated at the time. Only a sprinkling of the men who were there are in the Anzac units to-day. But they are the oiffcers ap-d N.C.O.'s, and that means a great deal. There ia much that is different trom GaHipoii. The raiD. has been heavier in March than for thirty-five years, and April until yesterday seemed almost as bad. The trenches are made passable by being lfoored with a wooden pathway which runs on piles—underneath which is the gutter of water and mud which is the veal floor of the trench. Sometimes the water rises in the communication trenches to that if you happen to step into an in- ternal between them you may quite weli t'ink to your waist in thin clay mud. The actual firing trenches and the dug-out there are mostly dry by comparison except where the accumulated task of draining them has been gaining' on some regiment which has been holding them, and the rear of the line i6 a morass of foul- jgtaelling day. BREASTWORK. Thi6 difficul ty never really reached us im Galipoli, though we might possibly hzale found the trenches falling in upon 1J6 in the rains of winter if we had' stayed. The trenches in France are full-of traces of old dug-outs and moulder- ing oandbags collapsed through rain in the dim past before the timbering of all work- ings was looked on as a necessity. In Axizac we never had the timber for all this, and one doubts if we ever could have had it had we forayed. The,soil there was dry and held well, and the trenches were deep and very elaborate to a degree which 'one has not seen approached in France. There may be some parts of the line where such trenches are possible and where they exist, but I have not seen them. It must be remembered that in many places here in Franco-there are stretches of line where it is impossible to dig a trench at all in winter because you meet water as soon as you scratch the surface, and thereior both our line- and the German are a breastwork built up instead of a trench dug down. The curious thing is that in the trenches themseltfcs you scarcely realise the differ- ence. Your outlook there is bounded in either case by two muddy walls over which you cannot wisely put your head in the daylight. The place may be a glori- ous green neld with tiowers and birds and little roedy pools if you are two feet over the parapet. But you see nothing from week end to week end except two muckiy walls and the damp dark interior of a small dllg-out. You see no more of the. country than you would in a city street. Trench life is always a city life. SNIPER WITH A FIELD GUN. The trench routine is much the same as it was in Galiipoli except that in any. part which I have seen the teThsion is noth- ing to great. It is not as though you were hanging on to the edge of a valley by your finger-nails and had to steal every yard, that. you could in order to have room to buiki up a second line and if possible a third line beyond that. Here both you and the enemy have scores of miles be- hind you, and two or three hundred yards more or lees makes no difference worth mentioning. s For this reason you would almost say that the German line in this country was asleep compared with the line we used to* A hundred and fifty yards of groen. grass with the skeleton that was once somo old' hay wagon upended in the middle of it, and sky-blue water showing through the grass blades in the depressions; a "brown mod wail straggling along the other fide of the green—more or less parallel to < your breastwork, with white sandbags' .crowning it like an irregular coping; the inevitable stumpy stakes and masses of rested barbed wire in front. You might w¡tch it for an hour and the only sign of lift; you would see would be a blue whiff of v-moke from some black tin chimney j stuct up behind it. If you tire at it the chimney probably will be taken down. The ether day, chancing to look into a peris- xope, I happened for a moment to see the top of a dark object moving along half hidden by the opposing parapet. Some earth was being thrown up over the breast- work just there, and probably the man had to step round the work which was going on. It was the first and only time I, have seen a German in his own lines. The German here really does his sniping much more with his field gun than with his rifle. They do use their rifles, too, and they are good shots but slow. A spout of dust on the parapet and a porieoope had been shattered in the observer's hand within a few yards of us. But it is gener- ally tie German field gun that does his leal sniping for him, shooting at any; small-body of men behind the lines. Halt- a-dozem are quite enough ii he eees them. The Turks used to snipe us at times with theirfi-eld guns and mountain guns, but generally at certain fixed places—down near the mouth of the Aghyl Dere, for example. The German snipes with them more generally. There is no place that I have Tisited which can compare for per- petual unbealthiness to Anzac Beach, but it is (jaite possible that several such places do exist. The German gives you the impression of being a keener observer than the Turk. The hills and trees behind his lines are really within view of you over miles of your own country, though you scarcely. realise it at first, and 1 hey are full of eyes. Also every fine day brings out his balloons like a crop of fat grubs—and also our own. In Galiipoli our ships had the only bal- loons,-tb. Turks had all the hill-tops. r THE GREAT DIFFERENCE. The aeroplane here a^'ords so big a, part of the hourly spectacle of warfare and makas so great a difference in the obvious conditions of the fight that he deserves an article to himself. But of all the dif- ferences by far the greatest is that our S-.Voops here hav-e a beautiful country and civilised enlightened population at the lack of them, which they are defending against the invachng enemy whom they have always hoped to meet. They are amongst a people like their own, living in villages and cottages and paddocks not so' different from those of their own child- i hood. Right up into the very zone of the; trenches there are houses still inhabited by their owners. As we were entering a communication trench a few days ago we jQcticed. fftur of five BrituJi §ftl']ier:^waltj  STREET, LONDON, E.C, I j COPYRIGHT. ? GEOGRAPEIA, LTD., 55, FLEET STREET, LONDON, E.C. ing across the open from a cottage. The officer with me asked them what they were! doing. "WVve just been to the inn there/j they said. ,I Yes, tix; people of that house are still living in it," the officer remarked. In Galiipoli there were brigade head- quarters in the actual fire trenches. From the headquarters of the division or the- corps you could reach the line in ten minutes' hard walking any time. It is a Sabrjath day's journey here—indeed, the- only possible way of covering the longer, distance regularly is by motor car or a ■ motor Cptle, and no one dreams of using any otlkar means—indeed, no other exists. Nearly the. whole of the army exoept the I troops in the actual firing line lives in a country which is populated by iU normal inhabitants. And wherein lies the greatest change of all-the troops in tho trenches themselves can be brought back every few days into; more or less normal country, and have al- ways the prospect before them at the end of a few months of a rest in surroundings that are completely free from shell or rifle ifre, and within reach of village shops and the normal comforts of civilisation. And throwing tie weather and wet trenches and the rest all in, that difference more than makes up for all of them. You see a fellow must look after him- self a bit," one of them said to me the hther day. A man didn't take any care how he looked in Gallipoli; but here with these young ladies about you can't go around like what we used to th1:'re." I Through one's mind there flashed we ll- remembered figures, mostly old slouch hat and eunburnt musele.-the lightest I can recollect was an arrangement of a shirt secured by safety pins. There they ,gCl more, carefully dressed than if they I were on leave in Melbourne or Sydney. Yesterday the country was en fete, the roads swarming with young and old, and the fields with children picking flowers. The guns were bumping a few mÜes away —mostly at aeroplanes. I went to tha trench es with a friend. Our last eight as we came away from the region of thejfi. was of a group of French boys and girls and a few elders around a haystack; and half-a-dozen big Australians with rolled shirt sleeves off up on the farming mac fi- ery helping them to do the work of the year. That is the greatest difference. [We are indebted to the High Commis- sioner for Australia for the foregoing article.—Ed.]

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