The gazette-times. [volume] (Heppner, Or.) 1912-1925, 1915-01-07
THE kRUPP MONSTER.
December Everybody 5.

lfetEHlbCA Every ltuN =
Every known weapon, from rifle to
aeroplane, has played about the part
that European army STATS have fore
seen. With a single exception no ma
ton had up its sleeve any revolution
AIRY secret instrument of destruction.
The exception waS the German trac-
ton siege-howitzer, which is to the
European war what the monitor was
to naval warfare in our Civil War.
AS you know. a ship armed with
tw~elve-inch guns, thanks TO the dis
lance that its projectiles will carry,
stands off safely out of range as it
sinks a ship with six-inch guns.
While the world let its imagination
play on the fearful destruction by
bombs from airshipS, the house of
krupp was at work on the principle
which makes the six-inch gun help
less against the twelve or the twelve
against the sixteen. While Count
Zeppelin was flying, the practical,
dividend-paying Krupps kept to earth
as usual. They made no ~pretensions
to genius. They relied OF the indus
try, energy. and merciless application
to detail of their experts and grimy
mechanics, without hesitation at any
proposition, provided the German
government could meet the expense.
There seems no limit to the size of
sUl that may be built. The Krupps
SCI out simply to bring up a howitzer
be.ure the enemy's forts that would
be If far heavier caliber than any he
ma med. Ii it had to be fred from a
cement foundation, then they would
build a cement foundation on the
spot. Most of the worlds artillery
officers would have been amazed at
the suggestion of a movable sixteen
inch howitzer. To transport it with
in any reasonable length of time
seemed impossible. But the Krupps,
being makers of guns, did not put
their monster into a single load. They
constructed it in parts, to be drawn
over the solid, graded roads of Eu-
rope by traction-engincs, which, pc
c~uliarly enough, were of English
manufacture, because the English
make the best heavy t~raction-en-
gines.
While armies trained to secrecy
seem to have been able to keep none
of their important secrets from one
another, this commercial concern,
with its workmen knowing only the
part of the gun which they helped to
make, kept the secret of the big guns
Not only that, but in some places,
through their own secret service,
there is good reason to believe that
they had cement platforms already
built under German factories or vii
las in Belgium.
And the Krupps wanted no assist
ance in manning the guns after they
were built. If the German army had
set out to drill artillerists for them,
the French might have found out
about it. These guns wer purely a
krupp affair; when they were taken
to war it would be by a Krupp fam
lily party.
The army tried to take Liege with
out waiting OH the Krupps' help, and
it's method gratifed the foresight of
the defenders. 1t threw masses of
infantry across an open space against
rife and machine-gun fire. The Ger
mans admitted a loss of sixteen
thousand as the cost Of their failure,
and the infantry did not make an
other attempt. They waited for the
Krupp party to come up with their
slow, cumbrous caravan of steel and
shells and engineers and mechanics.
Nothing glorious or warlike about
krupp party. They might have been
a construction gang off to build a
bridge; mere workers, without any
pretension to the honor of the aris-
tocratic Prussian military caste.
When the huge howitzers were set
up, they began coughing their enor-
nous shells at the forts. The shells
penetrated like the armor-piercing
shells Of the navy and exploded after
they were well embedded. Cement
work erupted under volcanic pres