The Brecon County Times Neath Gazette and General Advertiser for the Counties of Brecon Carmarthen Radnor Monmouth Glamorgan Cardigan Montgomery Hereford

A LOOK ROUND. The" Commonwealth of Nations." 1) SENTINEL."] WE have a picture this week ol the King, dressed as an Ad- miral, receiving the Prime Ministers of the British Dominions across the seas on board the battleship Britannia." Of course, it is a fancy picture, but it conveys an idea to us which we ought to remember. That is that we British people live and move and have our being by the Freedom of the Seas, and that. in spite of all that Germany can do, the Freedom of the Seas is so little interfered with that the representatives of the Colonies can come here as and when they please, to take counsel with our own statesmen 011 the things which concern us all. That is, for the moment, at any rate, on the conduct of the war. When Germany plunged the world into misery in 1914, one of the chief calculations of her War Lords was that, if Great Britain joined in, her Colonies would break away from her and set up as independent States. Germany has been woefully deceived in this. So far from breaking away, the Colonies have b drawn closer to the Mother Country. They have poured out their blood and treasure in the common cause. And, what is more, the great independent nation which broke away nearly one hundred and fifty years ago has now drawn closer to the old Mother Coun- try than at any time during all those years. It was some miscalculation for a great Empire mtit for dominion or downfall." was it not? Now, why did these free peoples, which dwell under the British flag, stand by us in this splendid manner? It was just bccausc they are free, and their freedom is protected by the Frce- dom of the Seas which Britain estab- lish over a hundred years ago, and has since preserved. Sea-power and free- dom go together, and have gone to- gether throughout all history. The sea is the great pathway for intercourse in time of peace it is an impassable bar- rier, except for the nation which has the mastery of it. in time of war. Be- hind this barrier, or, rather, behind the ships which guard it, nations can develop their own life in their own way. They do not need to be drilled and ruled by a despotic government as they do when, just beyond their land frontiers, there is a jealous or ambitious Power on the watch for a chance to attack them. When would-be conquerors of the world, like Xerxes, Philip of Spain, Napoleon, or the Kaiser, march their armies through ravaged lands to the coast, the navy which has the mastery of the seas says to them, Thus far, and no farther! That is our position to-day. and the peoples of Canada, Australia,. New Zealand, and South Africa know quite well that on the power of the British Navy to hold the seaways depends their own freedom from (lernian conquest. W e talk about the British EJlI- pire," and it is a convenient term. But, in point of fact, the realm of King George was better described by General Smuts as the British Common- wealth of Nations." What is a Com- monwealth"? Tt is a partnership to secure the common well-being—the well-being of all its members. All must have a voice in saying ill what that well- being consists. Great Britain does not want to interfere in the life of her children over-seas, and she takes no tribute from them. She flings the broad shield of her sea power over them, and leaves them free to develop their own life. But we have found out especially since the Germans threat- ened us with subjection to their ways, which are not our ways—that there is a common life and a common well- being in which we are all concerned. That is why, both this year and last, the Prime Ministers from over-seas have defied the threat of the U-boats, and have come to take counsel together. They and the peoples they represent are with us to the end. They see, even more clearly than we do, that if there is to be peace and justice on earth, the Prussian system must be utterly over- thrown and that the British way of life, which is the way of liberty and goodwill, must prevail on earth instead of the German. Therefore, they will fight by our side and we by theirs until the final victory is won.

THE REAL THING. Freedom of the Seas Based on the British Navy's Might. ALL through the war the load over the North Sea from England to Hol- land has been kept open. There have been days, even weeks, when drifting n.ines made the passage too perilous, and there have been moments when the Ger- man destroyers dashed down and back again; but all through the four years there has never been a long stoppage. It has been a source of particular bitterness to the Germans that we have held this particular passage, and an open sign to the world of her naval impotence and our naval supremacy. Of course, the Germans are ready with their U-boats, and especially their mine- laying U-boats, to contest our use of the passage, but real freedom of the seas con- sists in so asserting our sea-power that our ships come and go in spite of the pirates. One way in which we assert that power is to employ what is called the convoy system. Ships that want to cross between England and Holland make up a party and the British Navy sees to it that the under- water marauders get no prey. The Navy's Perfection. Picture the escort going out for duty. We went racing out of port (says one who lately took a trip 011 a destroyer) in line ahead, two flotilla leaders and a string of destroyers, and O! the pride of it. In the shallow water the broad stern wave swung high and white, and the bows of the next astern, cutting it, made a high, fine Prince of Wales's feather, with two white plumes that curled and swung away from the fixed and central grey. Each Prince of Wales's feather rose half a cable's length from where the stern wave began, and precisely half a cable's length away, all through this time of swingeing speed, it remained. This is the Navy miracle which is called keep- ing perfect station. The escort caught up the convoy and nursed it safely across the deeper water in which a U-boat mi:ght be lurking. Picture to yourself half-a-dozen cargo steamers, oddly painted, fantastically dif- ferent in type, stodgily chugging along. Before them go some destroyers. To right and left of them are more destroyers, but these are apparently afflicted with a form of dementia, as they zig-zag about like rothing so much as half-a-score of pupp'es let loose in a field. Discretion the Better Part. The Dutch convoy is given i wide berth by the U-boats. There arc soaplanes in the air that can detect the pirate at a great distance even when they are submerged, and the pirate known that if lie is detected '11 the neighbourhood of the convoy's path the bird-man will buzz a wireless message down to the destroyers and the destroyers will soon be dropping those depth charges of high explosive which shake the sub- marine to pieces and leave no trace, save for the bubbles of oil that tell their tale on the surface. So the submarine here- abouts now works chiefly by mines, which it lays in the dark, and then takes itself to safer quarters. It finds discretion the better part, we will not say of valour, but of its own particular dirty business. The seaplanes are quick to spot these mines. Picture one of them circling over a given spot on the water. Mines! Be careful," the pilot buzzes down to the ships and sometimes the shipmen, and some- times the airmen, will put an end to that mine, if it is lfoating, with a rifle or a round of machine-gun bullets. The escort zig-zags its way across with the convoy: zig-zags its. way home again. Picture them coming back at sunset their work well done. One who has been out with the convoy ends his narrative in these words: A ruby-red sun is sinking and under it is a long red glow, and under that again, between the red and the sea, as fat as one can see north and south, there is a laver of soft black. That is the smoke of the coastwise merchant traffic which con- tinues behind the protection of the ships of war." There you have a glimpse of the true meaning of that priceless boon which the British Navy gives us—the real freedom of the seas.

VILLAGE THUMBNAILS. BY E. W. R.J Camouflage. F chanced to be in the village potOfficp. and all oldish farmer's wife came in with a parcel. When she had gone I noticed two words printed in thick letters of ink above the address. "Good heavens! I said, "the meat shortage isn't so bad as all that, surely? The Postmistress laughed. That's Dame Brown's patent for safety," she said. The old lady sends her soldier grandson a pot of rabbit every week. Tlie pot got lost sometimes in the journey, and she hit upon an idea for labelling the contents. Every week she calls, and always those two words ar< boldly printed on the wrapper, POTTEI 'HAT.' The parcel never miscarries now.

I THE" EGGS" OF A GOTHA The newest (iotha, it is reported, can carry bombs of a ton weight, but the German machines that raid hospitals in France continue to use smallish bombs The specimens exhibited by these two young Air Force men were found in a Gotha brought down behind our lines in France a few days ago.

:= a HOT WORK ON A HOT DAY [liritish Oflicinl liritish gunners stripped and busy during the great German offensive. The net on Ule rijjht "spotted" with leafage is part of the camouflage used to hide the big gun when enemy aeroplanes are in the sky.

A SHEAF OF WAR STORIES. -0 Great Deeds Performed by all the Services. Revolvers and the V.C. Two of the newest V.C.s are awarded for feats in which the use of the revolver played a prominent part. Second-Lieut. Ernest Fredk. Beal, of the Yorks Regt., < ommanded a company detailed to occupy a certain section of trench; it was found when the company was established that a considerable gap of about 400 yards existed hetween the left :flank and the neighbour- ing unit, and that this gap was strongly held by the enemy. It was of vital importance that the gap should be cleared, but no troops were then available. Organ- ising a small party of less than a dozen men, Lieut. Beal led them against the enemy. On reaching an enemy machine- gun, Lieut. Beal immediately sprang forward, and with his revolver killed the team and captured the gun. Continuing rl long the trench, he encountered and dealt with another machine-gun in the same manner, and in all captured four guns and inflicted severe casualties. The young hero was killed by a shell on the following morning. The other case is that of Private Arthur Henry Cross, a Camber- well man in the Machine Gun Corps. Having volunteered to make a reconnais- • 1 sance of the position of two machine-guns which had been captured by the enemy, he advanced single-handed to the enemy trench, and with his revolver forced seven of the enemy to surrender and carry the machine-guns with their tripods and ammunition to our lines Eighteen Wounds in One Raid. Second-Lieut. B. H. Stott, of the Grenadier Guards, belongs to Rochdale, and was a bank clerk in Oldham before he joined the Army. He is still a month short of twenty-one, but he has had at least one crowded hour of glorious life, and won his niche in the gallery of fame quite recently in Macedonia. He was detailed for a raid on an enemy trench, and had a company of fellow Lancashires to back him up. They first drenched the enemy trenches with torpedoes," and then raided it with such fierceness that they put the foe to flight, and captured a machine gun that had been very trouble- some. Lieut. Stott received 110 fewer than eighteen wounds in that raid (it means only one wound stripe, though), and his fighting was so fine that the King 9 t-I has awarded him the Militaiy- Cross, ;it I(I the French Commander-in-Chief has decorated him with th' Legion of Honour and the Croix de Guerre. An Exciting Ramble." Corporal Ernest Jones, of the R. A.M .C., and Private Leighton (both Lancashire men) have a wonderful story to tell of their escape from the Germans after being cap- tured at the beginning of the great offen- sive in March. For several days the Germans compelled them to do duty in the fighting zone, and, as the men were getting scarcely any food, they decided to make a bolt for liberty. When their opportunity came they crawled under the barbed wire of the prisoners' "cage" and made off across country. Then they struck a road crowded with German war traffic. With many palpitations the men dodged through it, and, passing a field hospital crowded Z, with vehicles waiting outside, they got into a field. They had not gone far before a German officer flashed an electric torch over them. Both men had turned their caps round to look like Jerry," as they express it, and after looking at them closely, the officer walked off without speaking. From thence onwards they were in the fighting area. Numerous parapets were crossed, many trenches were gone through, and many gun positions encountered. Occasionally the gun crews shouted at them, apparently without suspicion that they were Englishmen. A well-lighted dug-out was the next trouble. Jones and Leighon walked on top of this, their feet creating a great noise on the corrugated iron. Jumping down from this a bucket fell, and they held their breath in suspense. Nothing happened. With great relief the pair scrambled over the parapet of a trench. Another main road was encountered, and the refugees hid beneath a hedge for three-quarters of an hour with Germans all around them. Reaching the edge of No Man's Land still undetected, they crawled through the Ger- man wire and across the bullet-swept area until they struck a sunken road and shel- tered there for twenty minutes. They went on again, having lost all sense of direction. Then another British star shell went up, and the men resolved to make a dash for it. Another parapet loomed up ahead and a Very light went hissing up into the darkness and drifted slowly earth- ward. A sentry could be seen leaning over the parapet and Jones shouted out, Are you English?" Yes, you fools," answered the sentry; where are you rambling to 1 n Lumsden, V.C. The death in act ion of Brigadier-General Frederick William Lumsden, V.C., recalls the brilliant exploit which gained for him the most highly prized of all distinctions. Six enemy field guns having been captured, it was necessary to leave them in dug-in positions, 300 yards in advance of the position held by the troops. The enemy kept the captured guns under heavy fire. Major Lumsden (as lie then was) undertook the duty of bringing the guns into our lines. In order to effect this, he person- ally led four artillery teams and a party of infantry through the hostile barrage. As one of these teams sustained casualties, he left the remainiug teams in a covered posi- tion, and, through very heavy rifle, machine-gun. and shrapnel fire, led the infantry to the guns. By force of example and inspiring energy lie succeeded in send- ing back two teams with guns, going through the barrage with the teams of the third gun. He then returned to the guns to await further teams, and these he succeeded in attaching to two of the three remaining guns, despite rifle fire, which had become intense at short range, and removed the guns in safety. By this time the enemy, in considerable strength, had driven through the infantry covering points, and blown up the breech of the remaining gun. Major Lumsden then returned, drove off the enemy, attached the gun to a. team, and got it away. Lumsden, V.C., did other brave things of almost equal merit. He had three bars to his Distinguished Service Order—a unique record—and each of them gained by a deed of great courage against the enemy. The War in the Air. Particularly good work was performed recently by an observation balloon which wa.s being towed by one of his Majesty's ships through a sector of home waters. The patrol was started at daybreak, and the balloon had not gone far before the observer sighted something which indicated the presence of a submarine. Depth charges were dropped, which caused the submarine to change its position. An hour later a submarine was seer, by the balloon to break surface a considerable distance away and to begin shelling a small sailing vessel. The balloon was towed rapidly to the spot. III the meantime the submarine was forced by the towing vessel to cease firing and to submerge. Aided by the balloon the towing ship was able to get- over the track of the U-boat, and to drop nine depth charges, as the result of which large quantities of oil rose to the surface. One of our airships, also on an eai y mom ing reconnaissance, sighted a °a engaged in attacking a nierchaiitma,. Putting 011 full speed the airsirp arrxv on the°spot just after the submarine had submerged, but the German had not got deep enough to be out of the vision ot the airship's crew. A bomb dropped about art feet astern on the U-boat's port evidently gave 'le' a 'u' shaking, streaks of oil rose to tlie surface ;UK' submarine was see., to alter her course to starboard. The airship manoeuvred position, and with a second bomb scored a direct hit on the stern of the submaime, fusing it to lift, towards the •«{*« roll as though about to turn turtle. Moie nil rose and the submarine disappeared from the airship's view.