[Illustration:  WHERE “REGIMENTS HAD BEEN RAISED AS IF BY A WIZARD’S WAND”:  GENERAL SMUTS SPEAKING AT JOHANNESBURG.

General Smuts, South African Minister of Defence, said recently that there had been a magnificent response to the call to arms.  On the Rand regiments had been raised as if by a magician’s wand.]

_______________________________________________________

___________________
THE ILLUSTRATED WAR NEWS, DEC. 30, 1914—­[Part 21]—­7

[Illustration:  AMENITIES OF MOLE WARFARE SATIRISED:  A FRENCH CARICATURIST’S SKIT ON THE “LUXURIES” OF LIFE IN THE TRENCHES.]

Both the French and British troops have made the best of things in the siege-warfare of the trenches, and out of an initial condition of misery have managed to evolve a considerable amount of comfort in many parts of the front.  Ingenious French engineers, for example, have constructed warm shower-baths, hair-dressing saloons, and similar conveniences, while the British “Eye-Witness” was able to write recently of our own lines:  “The trenches themselves are heated by braziers and stoves and floored with straw, bricks and boards.  Behind them are shelters and dug-outs of every description most ingeniously contrived.”  The above French cartoon, which is from “La Vie Parisienne,” is headed “La Guerre des Taubes et des Taupes” (moles).

_______________________________________________________

___________________
8—­THE ILLUSTRATED WAR NEWS, DEC. 30, 1914.—­[Part 21]

kingdoms, but that an agreement had also been reached concerning the special questions raised”—­a result which must have been anything but agreeable to the War-Lord of Potsdam, who had been thirsting for Weltmacht, or world-dominion, and casting about to pave the way for this result by absorbing the minor States of Northern Europe—­as a shark would open its voracious jaws to swallow down a shoal of minnows, or other small fry.  That this was a prominent plank in the platform of German policy must be clear to all who have read the diplomatic revelations of the last few months; but now the “Three Kings of Scandinavia,” going one better than their storied colleagues of Cologne, have shown that they are as obtuse to the blandishments of Berlin as the journalists of New York and Chicago.

[Illustration:  TYPICAL OF THOSE USED BY GERMAN AIR-CRAFT DURING THE WAR:  A BOMB RECENTLY DROPPED FROM AN AEROPLANE INTO WARSAW.

German air-craft have lately been active in the neighbourhood of Warsaw, the great objective of the German Eastern Armies.  Our photograph shows a bomb after it had fallen into the city.

Photograph by Illus.  Bureau.]