Harrisburg telegraph. [volume] (Harrisburg, Pa.) 1879-1948, 1919-07-10
No Wonder Germany Quit
NUMBER TWENTY-FoUR

1NAS ~ PSoAA bO
American soldier a queer kind of
an ANIMAL" said Major Frank c.
Mahin, of the Army Recruiting Sta
ton, 325 Market street, Harrisburg.
in the first place the European
buys himself a glass of wine and
then sees how much time he can
spend in drinking it, while the Amer
lean tries to find out how many
glasses he a drink in a given time.
The European asks the price before
he buys anything, but the American
buys it if he wants it and then asks
the price. Even the methods of
fighting are entirely different; the
in close fighting are en-
tirely different; the European in
close fighting gets into a hole and
hurls grenades blindly in the gen.
eral direction of the enemy, while
the American, if he uses grenades at
all, will run in until he can see his
enemy, wind up and proceed to try
and bean him with the grenade. In
an attack the European will try his
hardest to acquire an automatic
rifle with which he can scatter bull
lets all over the landscape, whereas
the American will throw his auto
rifle because it doesn't shoot
close enough to satisfy him and Will
pick up a Springfield with which he
knows he can hit an individual
Boche at 500 or 900 yards. But the
American weapon par excellence is
the As caliber automatic pistol or
revolver. What other nation ever
produced anything to correspond to
our old Western Gun Man? None!
What other nation has the Ameri-
can tendency to pack a gum None!
If a foreigner carries Il weapon it Is
a knife. What American can help
from handling IL revolver or pistol
if he gets q chance? None! 1t it in
.stinctive with us to love n pistol. For
sixty years we have specialized on
revolvers and pistols. Years ago we
found out that a small caliber pistol
would not stop n man so we built
huge accurate ASS. When this war
started the European countries con-
sidered the pistol as an ornament
TO be carried by officers. and conse-
quently built them as small and as
light as they could. Their favorite
was 20 caliber, which looks like and
is a toy in comparison with our
Abs. / have seen a man hit square
on the cheek bone by a Boche .25
bullet and all it did was make him
mad. OF course it left a small scar
like a deep dimple. If it had been a
AS it would have blown the whole
eide Of hia hna1 off pnIutn- 80.
European experience our first troops
to go to France were armed with
only a few pistols per company. No
sooner had they gotten into the
trenches than a frantic cry went up
for pistols aud lots of them. The
cables were busy sending rush or
ders of pistols and yet more pistols.
Now we had about 10. 200 of them
on hand when we went into the war
but that wasn't a drop in the bucket.
The good old AS automatic couldn't
possibly be turned out fast enough
so we had to order a lot of Colt and
Smith and Wesson AS caliber re-
volvers to the shortage. The
automatic had been built exclusively
by the Colt Co. on a Browning pat
ent (the same Browning of machine
fame), but they couldn't pro-
duce more than a couple of thou
sand n month. Several firms took I'M
the manufacture of both the pistols
and r%evolvers so that by October.
1918. we were providing 10000 pIs-
tolls and 10000 revolvers n month.
and had produced more than seven
hundred thousand since we got into
the war.
Even this tremendous production
was no more than enough to keep
IN to the demand. Time after tim q
7 have seen n Doughboy decline with
thanks the offer If some grenados
when he was about to go out on
pa troll or to clean up n machine gun
pcrt. He would smile and pat his az
and sure enough that would do the
business. When yol consider that n
trained man can fire 2f shots with
the n'tomatic pistol in ~ seconds.
rrd thnt won n 'tenderfoot' can hif
what be wants to with II. Won can
not wonder that our hoys preferred
IN crnw'l IN TO tho edge o. n tronoh
~ shcll hoio and pIue the Roche
with - n'rtoI rather than 10 lie IN
q shelf hole and chrc', grenades NJ
~ un~ecn oremv until ono mr. tho
~aho- oot blown IN. aenaciniIv whom
.ho Roche rovo- dream'n~ tho Amer
'N-~-' his oren"des wav hovcnd the
e-aw'lir~ douehhov who was fickIed
- doafh Mt the s"ceers ~ his own
American way of lighting"