Norwich bulletin., 1916-12-20
INSIDE LIGHT ON
 THE EUROPEAN WAR
An interview With Capt. John Hay Beith of the Argyll and Sutherland H ahlanders.
Especial to The Bulletin.)

ingtoi, where he spoke before the Ma tional Geographic Society on the 'Hu-
 man Side, of Trench Warfare" Cap tain John Hay Beith, of the Argyll
 and Sutherland iighlanders and widely known in the United States as
 Ian Hay, author of The First Hundred Thousand" in answer to numerous questions, threw interesting sidelights
 on phases of the European war which
 are not touched upon, customarily, in the despatches from the front. The Geographic Society has issued in the I form of the following war geography | bulletin the substance of an interview | with Capt. Beith:
 "The widely heralded British tanks have served their purpose, and doubt very much whether they will play any further important role in the war, " declares Capt. Beith, who was one of | the machine gun officers having charge 1 of the training of the gun crews for | the tanks"
 '"The tanks are essentially a weap- on of surprise They made their ad- vent on the firing line at the supreme 1 psychological moment. Our troops had virtually reached an impasse in the Thiepvai Woods, which the Ger mans had fortified and refortified un- til it seemed humanly impossible to make any further headway. Then came the tanks, secretly made, piece by piece, all over England and shipped to q point of assembly, on the Somme front. Not even the men whom I was training as gun crew for one of these ponderous but astonishipgly flexible death dealers knew the kind of a juggernaut m which they were to op- crate until they were ready for the terror spreading assault. The sur prise to the Germans was complete and Thiepval was ours. But now that the limitations of the tank are known to the enemy it's usefulness is no longer exceptional.
 While there must still be a vast amount of important fighting on the West Front, it is the general belief of many of our officers that the war will be won from the southeast. Firm in this belief, the British, French, and Italans are making phenomenal pre- parations at Saloniia and in the sprins the world will be amazed by the igi- gantic stroke which will be delivered from this quarter. Of course, if Ru- manla's situation were to become gen timely critical the Allies push through the Balkans would be hastened, for everything possible will be done to preserve the national integrity of our latest ally.
 It is interesting to note that while our tanks spread terror among sea soned soldiers, the 'Ieps', upon which the Germans so confidently relied as . civilian population with uncontrollabIe fear, have proved to be a complete failure, except that their comparative ly inconsequential r21ds have reacted against the Wouid-Ee terrorists and have been the most effective recruiting agents that the English army has had Indeed, it would have been T profitable venture if England had constructed a Yep and sent it, flying enemy cOiors, on tour of our islands, for wherever the f.irshJpS have appeared, dropping their coIrparI lively ineffective bombs, there has followed a remarkable in f1ux e raw material from which fight ing men could Jc made to avehge thea3 raids upon oar helpless civilian classes.
 Tt was my good fortune to witness tho destruction of q Yep on the oc- caSiDp of the first ,Iaborately organ- izeI but, as it proved, ahnrtive air raid on LondCn several months ago. The air-Ship was :eft3cilCd hy an aero plane, a W2gi) Of the sky which darted past the Sunbs~sorlc hulk, and, at ti!c moment when the two were side hy side, made a thrust with it's deadly sting-an explosive n1issih!e With a dull. distHnt 3"DoT: tho iT1pOtcnt cloud craf. was sl1it asun1rcd with flames and s"nI; raD;d]- from q height of'sev- eral thousand feet, both noses pointing downward.
 
 tops watching this battle between an aerlal Cyclors and a flying Ulysses, the latter pigny in size but inVincible in skill and cunning. AS the great ship settled each watcher imagined it had fallen in an alley just block away and forthwith an army of 800 O0e slghtcSeers set out upon a wild night chase to inspect the wreckage. Day break found fully 100000 of these cur ious ones lost in the byways and hedges on the outskirts of the city and only a small percentage of the number ever reached the wreckage 12 miles distant. in an open field.
 "Vcry exaggerated reports of the protest against according the nem- bers of the Zeppe!in's crew a military burial reached America. I believe there was a single instance of a wo- man, distrait over the loss of a rela- tive, who hurled stone or a potato at the funeral cortege, but no other untoward incident Occurred while the Germans were being inferred near the spot where their airship fell. The bodies were all carried to their graves by members of the British Royal Fly ing Corps.
 ITO the British subject one of the most notable achievements of this war has been the fact that England, nobly aided by her colonies, has succeeded during the short space of two years Tn raising her effective fighting strength from a pit;ful 1a0,0o0 (the size of the British regular army at the beginning of the struggle in Au- gust, 191D to 4,00e,000 men. Earl Kitchener declared at the beginning of hcstilities that he could not tell how long the war would last but that he did know England would reach ef- ficiency in three years The war lords hopes were anticipated by full year-in July, 1916 we were ready to fight, and actually began to fight with our fully developed army of national manhood strength.
 And not only has Great Britain trained and fully equipped 4,000, 900 men, but she has undertaken the task of supplying all her allies, except France, with the munitions which they so sorely needed at the begin ming of the struggle.
 France has mobiiized her own re- sources so admirably that she is able to handle her munitions promblems unassisted. One O. the great prob lems of supplying Russia has been to get the material to the Czar's men after 1t is manufactured. Much of it, of course, has been sent through Archangel, which is now connected by double-track railway with Petro- ha o1,