The Democratic banner. (Mt. Vernon, Ohio) 1898-192?, 1918-10-11
AMERICAN GUNS
MAKE A BIC HIT
WITH FRENCH
Results Of These Weapons OF
War Have Been Most As
tonishing.

Correspondence of The Associated
Prcss) American ingenuity is fast
making itself felt in the construction
of field guns in the vast workbousc OF
the ordnance branch of the American
army here.
One of the American designs which
has won strong favor with the French
experts Is the split trailer" which ex.
tends back of the gun from the wheels
down to the ground. From the earliest
days of gunncry this trailer has been
single piece. But the Americans
have split 1t in two from the ground
up. so that two great legs spread ont
backward from cannon
The results have been astonishing
permitting an ordinary field piece to
be elevated to 50 degrees, or almost
straight up.
The American design has now been
adopted as the standard French mo
del, and 1t is going into all the new
guns made ut French arsenals. Off
cial photographs made by the ord
nance branch are now going forward
for public exhibition i'm America show.
ing this split trailer firing at an clcva-
ton of 73.4O degrees.
Here could be seen also every form
of the death dealing machine-gun
which became such a formidable weap-
on in the present war
This is an age of mechanical war
fare" said the officer as he pointed
out the different types. French, Eng
lish. American, as well as German and
Austrian. "There were no machine
guns used in the civil war, only few
in the Spanish and Bocr
wars more in the Russo-Japanese and
Balkan wars, and now they have dcvcl.
Oped to foremost place as an cffcc-
tive and deadly means of warfare"
Most of the nations are making two
forms of these machine-guns, the
heavy type weighing about 20 pounds,
mounted on tripod and drawn by
mule. and the lighter automatic rifle,
weighing about Is pounds, fired from
the shoulder like an ordinary rifle, and
carried by hand as it is not much
heavier than the standard 1O-pound
rifle. Both types of these guns fire
of bullets are fed into the reservoirs,
the only limit being the amount of am
munition which can be carried With
each automatic rifle are three men,
one to fire and two to keep up the
steady feeding of ammunition.
The new type of American machine
| this array of makes from all the ma
tiOns. 1t is coming over in large guam
titles now. and most of the American
divisions now arriving come with their
machine-gun sections equipped with
the new American model. At the
training camps the tests have given
/ the best results, but the real test of
battle action is still to come as most
of the divisions on the fighting line
obtained their machine-gun equipment
before the new model was ready.
In this same arsenal one could com
pare the rifles and bayOnets of all the
cOmbatant troops. The American bay
Onct looked like long. sharp-cdgcd
knife. But the French bayonct was
more like a slender rapicr two feet
long and without cutting edge, meant
for stabbing The Russian bayonct has
no sharp point but is like a scrcw-driv-
or with flat-edgc, cutting and stab
bing at the same time.
And besides the guns of all kinds is
the ammunition stored in vast quanti
ties i'm arscnals and warehouses and
in huge parks and ammunition dumps
all the way from the coast up to the
fighting front The great stacks of
shells are very orderly in arrange,
ment. each stack representing IA car
load, and each graded by calber and
! lOt.numbcr. Each lot of shells differs
slightly in power, and the only way to
insure uniform accuracy in the fire of
a battery is to keep it supplied with
/ the same lot of shells.
Separate from the shells. are the
fuses and grenades kept in small dc
tached lots owing to their highly cx-
plosive character. In one of these
grenade dumps there were Is different
kinds of gas. hand and rifle grenadcs.
There are now some S.40O men, for.
merly skilled mechanics in large Am
erican factories, who are enlisted sol.
diers carrying on this huge work of
keeping up the supply of guns and am
muniton, Realizing the need of high,
ly skilled men for this work in France,
Il special recruiting campaign was car,
I ried on in many of the American in
dustrial centers last winter. The re-
suit is shown in the equipment of the
ordnance branch with stafi of skill