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<p>FIGHT IN THEIR SHIRTS.</p><hr /><p>AUSTRALIANS TAKEN BY SURPRISE AT LAGNICOURT.</p><hr /><p>UNDRESS VICTORY.</p><hr /><p>LONDON --- "DAILY XPRESS" <br />MAY 1st '14 (?)</p><p>By PERCIVAL PHILLIPS.<br />"Daily Express" Special Correspondent.<br />WITH THE BRITISH ARMY IN THE FIELD, Monday Night.</p><p>Although the German Divisions around the Scarpe are bearing the brunt of the present heavy fighting, their comrades holding the southern flank of this battle from between Bapaume and Cambrai have not been allowed to eat the bread of idleness. </p><p>"The terrible Australians," as one Bavarian survivor of the Lagnicourt raid describes them, keep their opponents in a state of constant feverish unrest. They are pounded by artillery and shocked by unpleasant surprises. Smoke shells and shrapnel are showered on their new Hindenburg defences between doses of ordinary high explosive. They cannot stir from the shelter of their dug-outs or move through the fields behind these much advertised trenches without breasting a storm which has but few lulls, and those extremely brief and of uncertain duration. </p><p>I asked an officer who accompanied me to this part of our new front south of Quéant whether the enemy attempted to counter this almost incessant bombardmen. </p><p>"He gets at least ten times as much as he gives us," was the reply. "On occasions, when he loses his temper and tries to be really nasty he gets twenty times as much."</p><p>FOOLISH RAID.</p><p>Since a foolish raid into Lagnicourt, which cost the enemy betwen two and three thousand men, he has been content to keep his infantry under cover. I saw many evidences of that decisive defeat in the shallow valley behind the ruins of Lagnicourt. Dead Germans still lay in some places, and fragments of their equipment were scattered over the grass. They had swept in columns out of their trenches in front of Quéant - that village was in plain view from where I stood - and the German observers watching the advance could see without glasses every detail of the assault and of the counter-attack, which flung the remnants of this force back on their own wire. It may be thought that the Australians would have been routed by the sudden descents of such a heavy force. </p><p>"It takes more than a rush of Huns to shake them," said an officer who had witnessed the successful conclusion of this episode. "Whenthey saw that the Germans might get as far as the guns they fell back, but, although they had not time to dress, they did not forget the most important thing. They retreated in their shirts, but carried the breech blocks of their guns. Less than three hours later the intruders were trying to get back to their own trenches through the openings in the wire. OUr batteries never did finer shooting. They had each opening ranged almost to an inch, and as successive parties of terrorised Germans were ordered through by their officers they simply disappeared in bursts of black smoke. Those who bolted in other directions were caught in the uncut wire."</p><p>KILLING GERMANS</p><p>Some of these Australians–still clad only in their shirts–lay on the damp ground killing Germans for an hour afterwards.</p><p>"Cold!" repeated one of them when questioned by an officer. "I would go without trousers for the rest of my life for another chance like this."</p><p>The occupants of Quéant have had bitter experience of the Anzacs since they were first driven out of Lagnicourt into the Hindenburg trenches. The Australians dashed up the ridge into the village with such impetus that many Germans were caught before they realised that their adversaries were within striking distance.</p><p>One officer who got into the main street after the first wave told me how he found two of them lying dead in front of the canteen. They had just come out each with a bottle of beer in his hand, and had been struck down before they had time to drop the bottles and pick up their rifles. One party ran from a cottage where they were sitting around a cooked meal–and the Australians finished the repast after finishing the Germans who had so obligingly laid the table. A prisoner taken afterwards told how some of the episodes in the capture of Lgnicourt had made a "profound impression" on the survivors, who were forced to sit afterwards in a hollow behind Quéant.</p><p>OPEN WARFARE</p><p>No troops on the Arras battle front were more delighted at the opportunity of open warfare than the Anzacs. Freed of trench routine and warmed by the spring sun, they are as happy and as enthusiastic as boys on a holiday. Every feature of the new campaign interests them. They delight in thinking out ingenious plans for the further discomfiture of the Hun. They have a grim appreciation of their own deadly humour. I passed one party of workers who were laughing over some jest and found they were discussing a recent incident of our bombardment.</p><p>"We tickled them out of the funk-holes with smoke shells," one of them was saying, "and as soon as Fritz came into the daylight he was sprinkled with shrapnel. Lord, he was surprised!"</p><p>[Second newspaper cutting]</p><p>The whole question of keeping inverstigations into disasters in the [indecipherable] is forced to the front by the lesson of the Mesopotamian inquiry. "Secrecy has been the curse of the Navy," writes an Admiral to <em>The Weekly Dispatch.</em> "It has enabled individuals to play for safety; it has covered up incompetence and prevented the best brains from having a chance. A Royal Commission into hushed-up affairs in the Navy would be more damning than the Mesopotamian Report. Commander Bellairs is the man to whom all the credit is due for emphasising the necessity for breaking this silence conspiracy."</p><p>The Admiral is possibly a little too severe in his remarks, but it is only fair to point out that the public have never been told anything of the circumstances under which the Goeben and the Breslau escaped and by their escape into Turkish waters largely contributed to bring Turkey into the war. Nor have the public ever been told the full story of the sinking of the threes Cressys and the Formidable, for what happened when the ––, about which the American newspapers had columns at the time, sank.</p><p>Despite his able statement in the House of Lords, the feeling that Lord Hardinge deserves the censure passed upon him by the Mesopotamian Commissioners remains unchanged, and it will be difficult for the Government, even having regard to his long service, to ignore the demand that he should leave the Foreign Office. Had anyone known what a tremendous indictment against him the Commissioners were framing there could never have been the slightest desire for him to be sent to Paris as Lord Berite's successor. And for his appointment there was very influential support.</p>