The Washington herald., 1917-10-14

quickly. What Americans know about
war preparations In the United States
quickly circulates in Europe, in in
iated form, because here the widest
rumors and most optimistic reports
are credited.
Here, on the contrary, from the be-
ginning of the war people have been
told nothing about their army or
fleet. The men in the street have no
idea how many divisions Britain has
in the field; the very names of her
twenty newest battleships; even the
| whereabouts of the fleet. are I'M
known to him; the whole war Is be-
ing conducted in absolute secrecy.
That such a distorted view of the
war should become current Is OBJ
viously most unfortunate and un-
desirable. The cure would seem to
lie in more publicity in Britain and
France, rather than less in the Unit
ed States; II it were possible to tell
the world what Is being done here,
! in the same graphic way that people
are being Informed about the prep
arations in America, the German
STATS might get some valuable in
formation, but the German people
certainly would be plunged in des-
pair.
Precedent for Action.
The only precedent for the efforts
of America to play part in the
war in France lies in the transport
overseas, in 1915, of Canadian and
Australian troops. The Canadians
i had one regiment of Boer war vet
Grams, the Princess Pats. in line
during the first winter, but a Cana
dian division was not able to take
over a sector of its own until April,
1915, eight months after war began.
The Australian and New Zealand
army corps reached Egypt. on the
| way to the Dardanelles campaign,
about the same time that the first
Canadians disembarked in France.
1t is not thought possible here that
the United States can greatly better
the record of the British Dominions,
because the Dominion troops had the
advantage Of the existing war ma
chinery in London, and were at first
placed under British STATS. The
American army is being compelled to
improvise its own machinery and its
own staff out of a war establishment
not more than one-fifth as big as.
and with far less war experience
than. the one existing in London in
| 1914.
When, in the distant future. the
American armies do charge upon the
enemy, the science OF war will bear
little resemblance to the 1915 and 1916
fighting which the phrase lover the
top" conjures up to the average read
er. A great bombardment, while lines
of men wait in trenches with fixed
bayonets to charge upon the enemy
at dawn; a wild bayonet melee among
spluttering machine-gun bullets; then
the feverish organization of captured
trenches against counter attack-this
was war. in the old days of the
Somme. Such war is almost obso-
lete now. By the time Pershings
men 'go in" it will be as out of
date as the tactics of Shiloh or Gettys-
burg.
Predictions Useless.
When I went over the captured
ground on the Vimy ride and beyond,
during the battle of Arras, and again
last month when / saw the Flanders
battlefields. my main interest was in
the signs and portents visible of the
kind Of war the American army will
have to wage. To try to predict what
war will be like in 1919, or even late
next year, would be madness; but it
is safe to say that it will be first
and foremost, a war of concrete. And
there will be, in the zones of the Of
fensives, no trench systems. Trenches
cannot exist, they become mere death
traps, under the weight of metal
poured out during an up-to-date bat
tie.
The first evidences of the concrete
war were available last spring. Profit
ing by the lessons of the Somme, the
Germans installed thousands of mix
ing machines behind their lines, and
began constructing the little pill
boxes" as the troops call them, or
camouhaged blockhouses built of
blocks of concrete ten and twelve feet
thick, big enough to hold garrisons OF
twenty or thirty men, with narrow
Sits TO permit machine gun fire and
flame throwing.
These pill boxes are the backbone of
the German defensive system today.
They are so strong that nothing but
direct hit from the heaviest kind of
shell will demolish them. They shed
ordinary field gun and howitzer shells
like raindrops. Next to the pill box,
the ruined house now proves tie nard-
est nut to crack. Steel girders are
placed across the cellar, then upon
them are poured many feet of con-
crete, and below crouches the earri-
son, safe against bombardment. yIth
machine guns, bombs, and emergency
rations in case they are cut off. Whole
days are sometimes required to re-
duce these redoubts, unless cases of
high explosive can be brough. 10 to
settle them. Shell holes are also con-
GREETED. and connected by underground
passages invisible, unlike the
trenches, from hostile aeroplanes.
Defense Zone Deepened.
1t Is by increasing the depth of the
defensive zone that the enemy is able
to hold out under the Commandments
to which he is subjected. Trench sys-
TENS Of the old kind could be entire
ly destroyed. the old style deep dug
outs broken in or filed with poison
gas, while today it Is next to impossj-
bic to smash all the hidden BLOCK
houses or discover which among thou-
sands of shellholes. over a devastated
area several miles deep, are filed with
defenders.
When the Americans attack. thew
will go forward in small groups. he
hind an artillery storm of such in
tensity that in all PROBABILITY at
ieast one cannon will be firing be-
hind every infantryman who ad-
Vances. Already, in the last verdun
attacks, more gunners than infan-
trymen were employed. II tactics
develop along the present lines, it
Will not be more than a year before
cannons are more plentiful than SOL
diers.
Poison gas, boiling oil drums.
name-throwing machines, are an
creasing in effectiveness on both
sides. The rife bullet, once the
prime weapon of destruction, gave