Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1916-07-02
Ism and the French genius for soldier
ing kept the Germans away.
Forest Of Heavy Guns.

6OISSt VI acdVy 0uuS.
| This time the British will be on even
| terms. A torrent of heavy guns has
| been coming over from England lately
A soldier friend recently toured the
English front. II found batteries of
big guns that had never been fired
tucked away behind every haystack;
said he. The country fairly crawls
with them. Here and there one is in
use for ranging. purposes. and the
crews of the hidden guns are sent to
it to watch it work" Some of these
guns have been sent to the French
front, where the French pronounce
them marvellous. What is far more I'M
portant, French gunners have been sent
to the English batteries. 1t takes time
to make gunner out of a greenhorn.
The French have always specialized on
artillery. The English did not realize
it's Importance until the war was well
under way.
Cd In a myriad of minor ways the
preparation for the English drive has
been painstakingly thorough. Much
Impotence has been exhibited because
of their slowness to act, but this has
not been well grounded. The previous
offensives have fallen down because
they were hastily conceived and care
lessly executed This time the British
have gone about the job of getting
ready as though they had all time and
a decent slice of eternity in which to
work. OF the 5000 miles of railroad
mentioned a fair share are standard
gauge for full sized railroad trains.
The remainder are Decauvilles.
British Have Awakened.
The British field telephone system
is better built than the state-owned
system of France" French officer said
to me the other day. They have put
up concrete poles and proper installa-
tons. 1t is SO good that l understand
that when the war is over the British
will turn it over to France as gift
That may seem a waste of time and
material. Perhaps it is. Nevertheless.
messages sent over that sort of a sys-
tenn will get through, and the getting
through may mean the life of a corps
at a time of pinch. The telephone wires
in the fire zone are differently protect
ed, OF course. An equally efficient tele-
graph system has been built Field
hospitals are everywhere. The wound
ed man will be carried to the dressing
station by the stretcher bearers, car
ried by ambulance to the railroad. and
in many instances be on his way to
England in a hospital train within six
hours from the time that he was hit.
Supplies have been sent forward. so
that the rails will not be impeded
needlessly at times of stress. Thou
sands of tons of shell have been buried
behind the battery stations: no one
knows how many thousand tons. The
enormity of shell production may be
gagged by the fact that | visited one
shell factory the other day in which
lo,oo0 persons are employed daily, and
this was only one, and not the largest
one in France. The shells are buried
to protect them from hostile fire and
from the eyes of spies and fers
Shells are not the only things that
have been cached back of the front
Tommys beloved jam and bacon are
hidden there. So are medi-
cal supplies-hundreds of tons of BAN
dages and drugs and splints-and lit
orally thousands of tons of rife am
munition and hand grenades. The
Briton has taken to the hand grenade
game like boy to a melon patch
Most of them have played some out
door game. and are good raw ma
terial for grenadiers. Nothing is quite
SO good as the grenade either for
trench defense or trench cleaning"
Briton with the hand-bomb. The
trenches are mines of high explosives
No troops on earth can stay in a trench
against competent grenadiers, once the
latter get near enough to exercise
their art.
Keeping Facts From Germans.
All this has required time and time
and more time When the war began
the English army provided two ma
chine guns to an organization as
against sixteen in the equivalent Ger
man organization. To complete the
general unreadiness the English gun