Evening Republican, Volume 20, Number 148, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 21 June 1916 — BRITAIN HAS BIG ARMY IN FRANCE [ARTICLE]

BRITAIN HAS BIG ARMY IN FRANCE

New Battalions Have Completely Engulfed the Old Regular Force. HOLD 100 MILES OF FRONT Never Have There Been So Many German and Allied Troops on the Western Front—Doctor# Help the Civilians.

By FREDERICK PALMER.

British Headquarters, France.—A correspondent who has been absent for six months from the British front is amazed upon his return at the Jncrease in numbers of men, guns and equipment. The numerous battalions of the new army which have arrived have engulfed the old regular army. Not one officer in ten whom one meets has had any military service before the war. Now one must ride a hundred miles to pass the British front. Khaki is thick in the villages of the Somme country as well as in those of northern Belgium. The British hold the famous “Labyrinth” as well as Ypres and Loos.

In the course of the taking over of a long section of the French line, ■which freed French troops for service, hundreds of miles of wire had to be laid, transport organized, headquarters moved, new corps and divisions created and commanders appointed. In the last few months new men have come into positions of responsibility. Men who entered the army as second lieutenants have become captains without yet being old enough to vote. Majors have become colonels and generals. •‘We do not know when the war will be over, but we do know that spring is here,” say the soldiers. The second winter in the trenches is finished. Its chill, wet monotony is over. Before another winter —well, what will happen this summer? The growth of the army and the sun drawing the moisture out of the mud emphasized the universal question. , Face Big German Army. Never, so far as one can learn, have there been so many Germans and so many allied troops on the western front as at this time. Next to the Verdun region, the German concentration is heaviest in face of the British of any section from the North sea to Switzerland. No German troops have been drawn off from the British front as re-enforcements for the attack on Verdun. One side or the other demolishes a section of enemy trench by exploding mines or by artillery concentration. Then the infantry rushes the trench, gathers In some prisoners, does what damage it can and returns to its own trench. In the morasses of the Ypres salient and the Loos region nothing more could be done, though a winter attack might be possible in high country like that around Verdun.

Much ingenuity has been shown by both sides in these trench raids. But no sooner has one side worked out a new trick than the other learns how to counter it. “Mud” was the reason given in a word by an officer why the British could not attack in winter to relieve the pressure on Verdun. “It was the season the Germans would have chosen for us to attack, he added. Doctors Help Civilians. Recently a bundle of reports which throw interesting light on the work of peace the British army is doing in France was collected at headquarters. They came from army medical officers all the way from the fighting line back •to the hospitals at the bases far from the zone of shell fire, and told of the service which the army doctor/ have been rendering to the civil population, France itself has been depleted of doctors. The young ones who did not go to the front as medical officers or to the army hospitals, went to fight. In many villages any British army doctor whp happened to be stationed there took the place of the local practitioner. These simple reports reveal the suffering and the sacrifice of the French population who have received free medical service from the allies. Surgeons go from the operating table to set the broken leg of a boy who has fallen out of a tree or to lance a felon; from the clearing station, where the white-bandaged wounded pass through, to look at the baby with

the colic in.,a neighboring cottage. There are many records of shell wounds both to women and children who have gone on living and working in the danger zone. His numerous patients became so fond of one British doctor, who to take any pay, as all do, that the children called him “Papa Anglais,” and when he was transferred to another post they took up a subscription and made him a present.

Wife, Aged Fourteen, Gets Divorce. Findlay, O. Mrs. Rolland Chain, aged fourteen years, has obtained a divorce from her husband, who is seventeen years of age. They were married less than a year ago here.