by Richard van Pelt, WWI Correspondent

Two front page headlines in the Capital Journal appear to indicate Germany has suffered setbacks:

“ON TO THE RHINE’ IS CRY OF PARIS TODAY
French Wax Enthusiastic When Reports of Victory Reach Capital

“On to the Rhine!” arose the cry in Paris today with the issuance of a war office statement telling of French victories in the extreme north, and, too the southward, on the kaiser’s own soil in Alsace.

ENGLAND AFTER BIG TERRITORIAL PRIZE IS LATEST REPORT
German East Africa About to Fall Into Hands of the English
CAMPAIGN ON INDIAN OCEAN BRITISH VICTORY
Dar-es-Salaam Center of the Fierce Naval Attack – Fall Expected Soon

Great Britain has begun operations to secure its third and last territorial prize of the war.

A small body of Indian troops, officered by Englishmen, recently seized the southern part of Nebuchadnezer’s ancient Babylonian empire, adding to Britain’s possessions the valuable Turkish “Hinterland” of the Persian gulf.

Soon afterward Turkish suzerainty of Egypt was dissolved and Cleopatra’s kingdom was formally annexed by the British.

Monday an English squadron bombarded Dar-es-Salaam, the port of German East Africa, and secured a foothold for the acquisition of the most valuable of the kaiser’s distant colonies.

Whatever else the war may give to Great Britain in the way of new colonial possessions will be subordinate in value to these three conquests.

There is scarcely any other land on the globe which the British covet. Babylonia, Egypt and German East Africa round off the empire.

The paper printed an appeal by the Commission For Relief in Belgium, titled “The Babes of Belgium” by Will Irwin:

Eighty Thousand Innocents Born In War
Mothers Scrape Empty tin Cans Thrown from German Camp Kitchens

At the concentration yards they sat in family groups. The children huddled about their mothers and grandmothers like chickens around hens. No child among them laughed or played; they were too weary for that; but no child cried. I was trying to have speech with these refugees, and finding them too nervous to give any account of their adventures when an ambulance arrived.

A nurse and a physician descended. A woman rose from a distant group and joined them. She carried in her arms a bundle wrapped in rags. The slant of her back showed that the bundle contained a child – there is an attitude of motherhood which none can mistake.

The women in the nearest group followed the pantomime with their tearless, hopeless eyes.

“What is it?” I asked.

For a time none of the women answered. Then one spoke in a dead tone.

“Her baby is dead,: she said. “She had no milk in her.”