The Waterbury Democrat., 1937-04-16
BEHIND THE SCENES
 4,.- i M
 WASHINGTON
Spain's Military Le ssOn Largely One of Morale Rather Than New Tactics.
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 Spondentl

Rather Than New Tactics.
 washington, April 16-The chief lessons our own military experts have learned from the warfare in Spain have to do with psychology and morale. x
 Although is has sometimes been said that. Spain has become prov ing ground for the armies of the world and their weapons of death, army officers here say little If any thing new has been learned about those weapons or their relative ef- fectivenesS. '
 But 1t has been demonstrated at Madrid that terrific hombardments from the air do not necessarily de- moralize a civilian population, even if carried on for months. On the contrary, it Is pointed out informal H at the, war department, bomb bardment appears to have stiffened the morale of the Madrid popula- ton by intensifying the anger of the people.
 Madrid is the first large city
 ever to sustain such 2 severe at-
 tack from the air and 1t was never
 possible to be sure as to these
 points before. The effect might
 have been different had the poison
 gas bombs been dropped, but the
 experts here say poison gas is not
 very effective in . city, that it is
 hard for planes to achieve con-
 centfatiOn i'm . gas bombardment
 and that it is relatively easy for citizens of g city to protect them-
 selves from gas. These col;sedera-
 tions, rather than any of human
 ity, are believed to explain the
 failure to drop gas on Madrid.
 On the other hand, the appear ently low morale of Italian troops in Spain when under severe attack has also impressed American mili- tary strategists. It is believed that Mussolini failed to "whoop them up'' with the proper amount of emotion and war hysteria, that they found themselves on foreign soil without conviction that they were fighting for a holy cause of any sort and that this lack of a proper ad mixture of bitterness, zeal and pa- triotism helps explain their willing ness to retreat when fighting be- came fierce.
 The Spanish loyalist troops, on the other hand, have been imbued with hatred and the conviction that they were fighting for their lives, home and freedom against an in- vader.
 Infantry Still Basic
 StresSing the fact that the Span- ish war would be much more in- structive if one strong power were fighting another and each was using its best men and materials, general staff officers nevertheless are in- sistent that 1t has demonstrated their contention that airplanes tanks, artillery, machine guns and all new o improved wrinkles of war fare are simply auxiliaries to infan- i try. No territory of strategic point can be captured or held without ar adequate force of infantry, they point out, and the Spanish war has shown no change in infantry tac- ties. Mechanized units, meaning tanks or other armed and armored vehicles, are said not to have proved especially effective, although they're far speedier and more dead- ly then they were in the World war.
 The rebels have received all their new planes. and major armamentS from Germany or Italy and the loy- alistS theirs from Russian or France, according to war department infor- nation. ''
 Italian bombers have been con-
 spisuous, but Russian pursuit
 planes have done the most out
 standing work. The latter appear
 to be . combination of pursuit
 and attack planes "Hedge-hop- ping" and spraying ground trops
 with nachii;e gun fire, they have
 proved that this method of war
 fare con be extermely effective
 either in delaying endorsements
 or in actual attach when support
 ed by infantry!
 "Archies'' More Effective
 Anti-aircraft guns are shown to have developed immensely since the World war. A new director, correct ing for barometric pressure, wind and many other factors, operates electrically to keep guns of an entire battery trained on an enemy plane, with each gun firing from 20 to 25 shots a ''lute. The high explosive shells, when exploding, each create danger area for planes as large as football field. Anti-aircraft guns have brought down 80 per cent of the planes disabled. At first Franco, with German batteries and German-trained crews, had mor- opoly on anti-aircraft effectiveness. But Madrid, which had the equip ment from the beginning, has re- gently appeared to have effective trained personnel to man them.
 Our. military men don't know which side will win the war. They say that's because no one knows whether Mussolini will insist on bringing in more arms and more troops.
 Copyright, 1887, NEA Service. Incl
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