New Britain herald., 1915-09-01
A New Horror of War.
Bridgeport Telegram. )

Despatches from Petrograd report a new scientific horror devised by the industrious Germans for use in war fare In this case it is form of shrapnel combined with fire bomb, so that the splinters of steel burn as well as main. oftentimes causing fatalities from wounds, that with ordinary shrapnel, would be curable.
 We suppose that new atrocity charg- es will be launched against Germany on this score, and yet when one looks at the whole proposition from his tcrical standpoint how ridiculous is any attempt to define what is the pro- per way to kill a man in warfare, and what the improper way.
 In the good old days a man of war ventured forth clad literally from head to foot in armor, hence the term "cap-a-pie," to describe such arma- ment. The human dreadnought, too wcighty to fend for himself. . was hoisted on board backed nag and launched into action by his faithful retainers Armed with lance he gall loped cumbersomely against an op- posing dreadnought. When the shock of collision was over, one or both of them would be fiat and gasping in the
 
 back That was civilized warfare, and 1t was carried on with a high de- gree of gentility and many pretty courtesies.
 At that time the most inventive military genius, the German of his day and generation, was Edward III, of England, who came to the startling conclusion that good cloth-yard shaft, tipped with an arrow head and launched by an ordinary yeoman was a better weapon than the lance of the gentry-better because 1t could be fired from distance and because yeoman were plentiful and gentry were scarce. Puttinf; his theory into practice he swept the hoWer or tIu- rope" into the dust-heap on the bat tlefield of Crecy, and we suppose that the "atrocity'' cry was never so loud 1y dinned throughout the world as then. What a wagging of heads and thrusting of tongues into cheeks there must have been, especially on the part of those who happened to be the targets for the arrows of Edward III and the Black Prince.
 But arrows came to be adopted as weapons of war, and lances fell into olisuse. The arrow ceased to be an SJrOc1GN ana was tS OIllO- dox practice. Next came the use of gunpowder, and again the atrocitH cry. Then gunpowder was standard ized. So on, to the present day. Every new invention for the killing of men has been hailed as an atrocity and adopted finally as standard practice. So we may look upon the German "atrocities'-the use of poison gas and fire bombs-as military practice in the making, and nothing more. The school that attempts to deal with war as though it were a garden party Or a five o'clock tea, and to behedged with rules and regulations, is still with us But war, in essence being the absence of all rules, cannot be bound by rules And man killing, being essentially a process of extin- gushing life by fair means or foul. cannot be limited like Marquis of Oueensbury boxing rules, to a blow above the belt Like the traditional ricture of a forehead, attended by a pretty Red Cross nurse, so the picture of warfare as a sort of pleasant game played by honorable gentlemen must be expugned from the public mind. The sooner we look upon warfare as it is, dirty, murderous butchery, foul with the violation of all rules, the sooner we shall have done with it.