Advertiser – April 1917

Mon 2 April p 7
RETURNING SOLDIERS: TWO BATCHES EXPECTED SHORTLY.
Advice has been received by the military authorities that the undermentioned sick and wounded soldiers are due to arrive in Adelaide at an early date. All men not requiring immediate treatment at the hospital will be given leave and can proceed to their homes, at the conclusion of the procession, without first attending at the hospital. The date and time of arrival in Adelaide will be published as soon as available.

Mon 2 April p8
Message from Mrs Pankhurst
The Correspondent of the United States Press Association in London has had an interview with Mrs Pankhurst, the leader of the Women’s Social and Political Association, who sent the following message to the American women: –“ You should join in the fight against Germany, because if Germany is successful Americans will not have a country to defend. Mr Lloyd George informed me that the Government have drawn up a partial Women’s Suffrage Bill, which will be made effective as soon as possible…

Sat 7 April p7
AMERICA’S PART
Although it is only now that America is beginning formally to shoulder her share of the burden of civilization, there is a sense in which it is quite true… that she has been in the war from the start… Not all, perhaps, have viewed the situation quite in this light. Indeed, many have been pained by what seemed to be the spectacle of the Government of a powerful state sitting in silence while the solemn documents to which there hand was pledged were torn up, and while a little nation was being martyred, and the usages of civilised warfare were violated as in the history of the world they had never seen before…

Wed 11 April p6
THE SPRING OFFENSIVE
It is no exaggeration to say of this morning’s cable message that they are the most sensational we have had from the Western front since the war began. All the winter the world has been anticipating with anxious eagerness the great spring offensive, in the strong conviction that it would furnish and answer to the much-vexed question whether or not field fortifications can… be made invulnerable…

In the Somme battle the belligerents were much more evenly matched than now, and yet in the first couple of months the Allies took 50,000 unwounded prisoners. They will do vastly better now, when the enemy are suffering from the loss of morale, which must have resulted from their involuntary retreat of the past few weeks…

The Allies have now a bloody part to tread, but they are well prepared for the journey, and have at their service every instrument of scientific warfare, including the armoured cars and tanks, which are doing better work than ever in enabling the advancing troops to bring their fire to bear on the enemy’s fortifications at close quarters with a minimum of danger to the assailants.

Wed 25 April 1917 p6
ANZAC DAY
Today stands as a red-letter day in the chronology of these southern lands as that dedicated to the memory of their heroes who gave their lives for the Empire and humanity in one of the sternest enterprises connected with the war. Military strategy came at last to recognise that the object which took them to Gallipoli was unattainable, and they there were ‘up against’ a position truly impregnable… The heroes of Gallipoli did not fight and die in vain, even when regard is had to the mere technical value of their contribution to the war, for they lighted the task of the Russians in Asia Minor; and it may have neem as much their efforts as those of the army on the Suez canal that saved Egypt from invasion….