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

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 Luederitz 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 decourager 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.

At the opening of the French Chamber on the 22nd, M. Viviani, the Premier, expressed the national resolve to continue the war till the cause of the Allies is won.--[_Photo. Topical._]]

Admiral Sir George Callaghan was Commander-in-Chief of the Home Fleet from 1911 till the war began. He has since been on the War Staff at the Admiralty.--[_Photo. Heath._]]

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our authority at the other extremity of the Dark Continent--in the person of the Khedive, Abbas II., who has now been replaced by Prince Hussein Kamel Pasha as the nominal Sultan of Egypt--under our protection and power.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

(Continued overleaf.)

Interviewed recently, General von Heeringen said: "The English first-line troops are splendid soldiers, experienced and very tough, especially on the defensive."--[_Photo. Bain._]]

__________________________________________________________________________ THE ILLUSTRATED WAR NEWS, DEC. 30, 1914--[Part 21]--3

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._]

__________________________________________________________________________ 4--THE ILLUSTRATED WAR NEWS, DEC. 30, 1914.--[Part 21]

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."

The Australian Squadron arrived at Herbertshoehe, Neu Pommern, on September 11. After some fighting, the Germans surrendered, and, two days later, the Union Jack was hoisted at Rabaul, the German capital. The proclamation was read by Major Francis Heritage (facing Colonel W. Holmes, the central figure in the photograph). For the benefit of the natives an address was given in amusing "pidgin" English (see the "Times," November 16). Neu Pommern (formerly New Britain) is just east of New Guinea.]

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 Duesseldorf 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.

__________________________________________________________________________ THE ILLUSTRATED WAR NEWS, DEC. 30, 1914--[Part 21]--5

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._]

__________________________________________________________________________ 6--THE ILLUSTRATED WAR NEWS, DEC. 30, 1914.--[Part 21]

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 Koelnische 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.

Armoured trains worked by the South African Engineer Corps have done useful service in the operations against the rebels. The truck in the photograph, it will be seen, is loop-holed.]