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Show 23 KILLED WHEN GERMANS BOMB BRITISH TOWNS Southend, 40 Miles East of London, the Chief Suffer- j er, According to Report of the Admiralty. 50 INJURED BY THE EXPLOSIVES Margate Also Attacked by Teuton Airmen ; French Aviators Bombard Frankfort-on-Main. By Agence Radio to International News Service. CHRIS TIANIA, Aug. 12. Heavy firing was reported from the direction direc-tion of the Skagerak last night. Rumors of a sea battle are in the air. Norwegian torpedo "boats immediately im-mediately set out to investigate. LONDON, Aug. 12. Twenty-three persons, per-sons, including nine women and six children, chil-dren, were killed and fifty persons were injured at Southend, in Essex, forty miles east of London, by bombs dropped from German raiders today, says an offl- cial statement issued tonight. Consid enable damage to property was caused at Southend by the forty bombs dropped upon the town. Two men were injured at Rochford, but four bombs dropped on Margate, in Kent, did little damage. The latest statement follows: Enemy raiders caused considerable damage at Southend, where they dropped about forty bomba. The casualties cas-ualties thus far reported are: Killed, eight men, nine women, six children. About fifty people were injured. but; no damage is reported. At Mar-1 Mar-1 gate four bombs were dropped. One uninhabited house was demolished, but there were no casualties. VICTIMS OF RAID MOSTLY WOMEN AND CHILDREN LONDON, Aug. 12. Unofficial telegrams tele-grams received from Southend shortly before be-fore midnight say that the deaths there now are known to have - been mostly those of women and children. Two airplanes air-planes were over the town about ten minutes, firing aerial torpedoes as well as dropping bombs. FRENCH AVIATORS BOMB FRANKFORT IN RETALIATION PARIS, Aug. 12. Two French aviators yesterday dropped bombs on Frankfort-on-the-Main, one of the most important cities of the German empire, having a population of more than 300,000. A French official statement announcing the raid says it was in retaliation for the German aerial bombardment of Nancy and the region north of Paris. Both French machines returned undamaged. MANY LIVES SAVED BY QUICK ACTION OF THE BRITISH LONDON, Aug. 13. Reports from various, vari-ous, local correspondents indicate that the German airplane raid Sunday would have been much more serious but for the preparedness pre-paredness of the British defense. British airplanes, at the first Intimation of the enemy's approach, arose from all points, climbing upward at a terrific pace at daring- angles, with the result that before the Germans arrived fleets of British machines ma-chines were in waiting. The activity of the airplanes and the excellent fire from anti-aircraft guns ap-" pears to have nullified the attempted operations of the invaders virtually everywhere except at Southend. There are many stories of scattered flights by the Germans to avoid risking engagements engage-ments with the defenders. The weather was bright and fine with a strong westerly west-erly wind, which, perhaps, was less forcible forci-ble at the great height the raiders traveled. trav-eled. It appears that the largest section of the invading squadron operated over the Thames estuary, but the circumstances which resulted in Southend's being the chief victim are not apparent. The "town was full of holiday makers. Many of these were on the way to the railway station to take a train for London when the bombing began, and there were man v casualties among them. One bomb alone killed seven persons and wounded many others. Elsewhere the people who remained in the street instead of taking to cover were (Continued on Page Two U ARE KILLED JfGEp BOMBS (Continued from Page One.) the chief sufferers. Hundreds were thrown to the ground by the concussions, but ail escaped serious injury. Reports from Ileal. Ramsgate and other coast towns say that the main result of the air raid warning was to draw crowds to the sea fronts to watch the invaders. Thanks to tiie promptness of the British Brit-ish airplanes in attacking tiie raiders, all these places escaped and the onlookers saw aerial battles, though at a dim distance. dis-tance. None of these fights seem to have been prolonged or, as far as is known, to have resulted seriously for the invaders, in-vaders, whose plan seemed to be to avoid fights in order to insure a safe return tfi their base. COMPEL AMERICANS TO LEAVE GERMANY (By Agence Radio to International News Service ZURICH. Aug. 12. The German federal fed-eral council has approved the recent proclamation forbidding payments to American citizens residing in Germany. A re'-ent cable dispatch stated the German Ger-man government had taken steps to pie-vent pie-vent Americans m Germany from receiving re-ceiving money l emittances. It was sain this was done fur the purpose of compelling com-pelling Americans to leave the empire. Lieutenant von Prittwitz, who was attached at-tached to the foreign office as a sort of special aid to Von Jagow, was detailed iu ai.i.uiiijJii.Y nn. Through France to Charleville. We were given a special salon car and left on the evening of Friday, April 2S-As 2S-As we n eared the front by way of the line running through Saarbrucken our train was often halted because of long trains of hospital cars on their way from the front to tne base hospitals in the rear, and as we entered France there were manv evidences of the obstinate fights which in August, 1914. had raged in this part of the country. Parts .of the j towns and villages which we passed were in ruins and rough trench lines were to be discerned on some of the hillsides. At i the stations weeping French women ! dressed in black were not uncommon sights, having just heard perhaps of the death, months before, of a -husband, : sweetheart or son who had been mobilized mob-ilized with the French army. The fortress of Metz, through which we passed, seemed to be as animated as a- beehive. - Trains were continuously passing. Artillery was to be seen on the roads and automobiles were hurrying to and fro. The great areneral headquarters of the kaiser for the western front is in the town of Charleville-Mezieres, situated on the Meuse in the department of tiie Ardennes, Ar-dennes, which department at that time was the only French department wholly in the possession of the Germans. "We were roeeived at the railway station by several officers and escorted in one of the kaiser's automobiles, which had been set apart for my use. to a villa in the town of Charleville, owned by a French manufacturer manu-facturer named Perin. This pretty little lit-tle red brick villa had been christened by the Germans "Sachsen Villa," because It had been occupied by the king of Saxony Sax-ony when he had visited the kaiser. A French family servant and an old gardener gard-ener had been left in the villa, but for the few meals which we took fn the villa two of the emperor's body huntsmen had been assigned, and they brought with them some of the emperor's silver" !iand china. The emperor had been occupying a lare villa in the town of Charleville until a few days before our arrival. After the engineer of his private train had been killed in the railway station by a bomb dropped from a French airplane and after aft-er another bomb had dropped within a the kaiser he mcved to a red brick chateau cha-teau situated on a hill outside of Charleville, Charle-ville, known as either the Chateau Belle-vue Belle-vue or Bellaire. j Nearly every day during our stay we lunched and dined with the chancellor in the villa of a French banker, which he occupied. About ten persons were present pres-ent at these dinners, the chancellor's son-in-law, Zech: Prittwitz, and two experts in international law, both attached to the foreign office. At two dinners appeared ap-peared Von Treutler, the Prussian minister min-ister to Bavaria, who hud been assigned to represent t he foreign office near the person of the kaiser, and Helfferich. who, toward the end of our stay, had been summoned from Berlin. Happy Family at German Grand Headquarters. T had been working hard tit German, and as the chancellor does not like to talk English and as some of these persons did not speak that language, we tried to carry on the table conversation in German, but I know that when I tried to explain to Helfferich the various tax systems of America in German I "swam out far beyond be-yond my linguistic depth. During our stay here I received cables from the department of state which were transmitted from Berlin in cipher, and which Grew was able to decipher, as he had hroucht a code book with him. In one of these it was expressly intimated that lii any settlement of the submarine controversy America would make no distinction dis-tinction between armed and unarmed merchant ships. We formed for a while quite a happy family. The French owners of the. villa seemed to have had a fondness for mechanical me-chanical toys. Aftei dinner every night these toys were set going, much to the amusement of tiie chancellor. One of these toys, about two feet high, was a hoochi-koochi dancer and another successful suc-cessful one was a clown and a trained pig. both climbing a srepladdf-r and performing per-forming marvelous feats thereon. Grew, who is an excellent musician. pivd the piano ur the chancellor and at his special request played pieces by Uach, the favorite composer of the chancellor's chan-cellor's deceased wife. One day we had tea in the garden of the ' ilia formerly occupied by the emperor em-peror with the prince of Pless, who Is always al-ways with the kaiser and who seemed to be a prime favorite with htm, Von Treutler and others, and motored with the prince of Pless to see some marvelous Himalayan pheasants reared by an old Frenchman, an ex -jailer, who seemed to have a strong instinct to keep something in captivity. The kaiser's automobile, which he had placed at my disposal, had two loaded rifles standing upright in racks at the right and left sides of the car, ready for instant use. One day we motored, al-; al-; ways, of course, In charge of the offl- cers detailed to take care of us, lo the j ancient walled city of Rocroy and through the beautiful part of tiie Ardennes forest for-est lying to the east of it, returning to Charleville along the heights above the valley of the Meuse. |