8—THE ILLUSTRATED WAR NEWS, DEC. 30, 1914—[PART 21].
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.
This was the recent meeting, not at Cologne, but at Malmö, of the three Kings of Scandinavia—Denmark, Sweden, and Norway—who lunched, and dined, and debated together for several days, when it was at last announced to the world at large (and Germany in particular) that "their deliberations had not only consolidated the good relations between the three Northern
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.
According to all accounts, the Allied position in the west, especially the British section thereof, is as "safe as the Bank of England," to use the words of one of our officers already quoted; and though the Kaiser, recovered from his illness, has again returned to the front—or, at least. the distant rear of the front—he does not seem to have much refreshed the offensive spirit of his armies. Nevertheless, the French communiqués have suffered from no great diminution in the daily records of sporadic trench-fighting all along the Allied line—fighting of a fluctuating, if on the whole favourable, kind for the strategic plans of General Joffre, as to whom, one German officer in Belgium said that he wished to God his country had such a War Lord, seeing that, apart from Marshal Hindenburg, all their Generals were only worthy of disdain.
A PRINCELY INDIAN GIFT: MOTOR-AMBULANCES PRESENTED TO THE KING FOR THE FORCES BY THE MAHARAJA SCINDIA OF GWALIOR.