The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1915-07-01

(COuIln ued.
 Between Taunton and PaEvtucket a militia company of field artillery that had been unable to move it's gnn be cause it lacked horses got 1t from it's hiding place and with g party of vol unteers who had DO firearms fought behind piled bags of cement against enemy cavalry till artillery had to be brought from miles away to destroy them.
 South of Woonsocket a band made up of thirty Massachusetts, militia in fantry and sixty factory hands from the town. prevented two companies of hostile infantry for almost two hours from crossing the Blackstone river. It was not because they could shoot or knew how to fight 1t was because they meant to stay there till they died. And it WAS not until they were dead that the invaders succeeded in cross ing
 New England women who had spent their lives in homely, simple duties brought out dippeB of water to parch- ed men and cheered them on. They hid fleeing men in barns and stood by, defiant, when pursuing soldiers drag ged them out and shot them before their eyes.
 Men took down old mnSkets that had been over chimney places for gen eratfon. Their wives and mothers kissed them as they went out to fight.
 Grandparents saw their sons and their sons sons lie in ambush in anees tral pastures that had not echoed to a ruder sound than the lowing of cows and they saw them vanish away in red storm and did not weep.
 Fo- Az word through Massachusetts and Con necticut This was something that the unarned country had and that 1t knew how to use Even the peaceful farm CTS had 1t and were practiced in han ding it from long work in blowing out stumps and rocks. Irish construction gangs. Italian road makers, workers of every tongue and race from pits and quaTries, joined the New England men
 They blew up sunken road through which artillery was numbering. They blasted away a steep bank and buried q troop of cavalry. They blew up mined road in front Of infantry, and when 1t retreated sprang a second mine under the soldiers feet that ex- terminated battalion
 Railroads and roads were blown up before advancing troops and behind them. Men blew up bridges and pre- vented their own escape so that the armed forces caught them as in a trap and slaughtered them at leisure Via ducts and works were dynamited that never could have been of any use to the enemy. It was formless, system less destruction but in that very lack of system Lay it's danger to the enemy forces.
 Had all the men in New England who were engaged in this wild fighting been gathered in one body the trained, disciplined soldiers could have dispos- ed of them in an action so simple that they might scarcely have ~nam med it skirmish But this was like forest fire, that, stamped out in one spot, breaks into roaring flame in another. As 1t sweeps from tree tops to tree tops and creeps underground and flames out in quick fury miles away, so the war fire raved through Massa-I chusetts and Connecticut to be crushed out only in detail with detailed, bitter work through all that long, hot, dusty day.
 It was serious. This uprising of an undisciplined population could not de feat or even damage seriously the great army But it could hamper it. It would force a wide scattering of troops