Japan has transported two hundred big Krupp guns, together with the men and officers for handling the guns, over the Trans-Siberian Railway to the Russian front. For this service Japan is said to have been promised that half of the peninsula of Saghalien which at the present belongs to Russia. These guns were purchased by Japan from Germany last year.
The King of Saxony has joined the troops in Belgium. His presence greatly encourages the men. He is said to be taking the Kaiser's place while the latter is in East Prussia exhorting his warriors there.
When a wounded Belgian soldier was examined in the hospital a leather purse was found in his pocket and in it a bent and broken Belgian one-franc piece, part of which was missing. The purse itself was badly gashed by a bullet. The man's wound did not heal readily and the surgeon, probing deeper into the man's thigh, found the missing part of the coin imbedded near the bone. It was removed and the soldier speedily recovered.
"I have the honor to inform you that I have enlisted in the 4th Queen's," wrote a butler resigning his position with a wealthy Kent family by whom he had been employed for fifteen years. "I hope my leaving will not inconvenience you, but I feel that my obvious duty is to do my little share toward the defence of my King and country, especially as my work as an indoor servant is such as can be done--and in times like these I think should be done--by women. No single man with any patriotism can remain if he is able-bodied and otherwise eligible to serve in the army."
"A Hindu belonging to a Lancer regiment to-day rebuked in my presence a man who spoke slightingly of the German people," cables a correspondent. "With amazing dignity he said:
"'Do not talk like that of the Germans. It is a great country which can make war on five Powers. They are brave men who can fight and die as the Germans do. The pity for them is that they are not so well trained as we.'"
How Rudyard Kipling narrowly escaped arrest on a charge of espionage is told in the following letter written by Cycle Sergeant Callis of the Fifth (Loyal North Lancashire) Territorials, now training at Sevenoaks:
"Our battalion turned out in full marching order and proceeded to our usual practice ground, Knole Park. The cycle section marched in the rear of the column and an ordinary looking man came to me and asked me a lot of particulars about the battalion. He told me he had seen a lot of soldiering in his time and said he must confess our men struck him as being about the smartest on the march he had ever seen outside the regulars.