Copyright by Underwood & Underwood A MODERN GRENADIER

Throwing the hand grenade, a missile that was popular in the 17th century, discarded in the 19th century, and revived and widely used in this war

zers invented by Prof. Otto Rausenberger and manufactured by the Krupps. The Skoda gun, the Austrian 30.5 centimetre (12-inch) howitzer, manufactured at the Skoda Works near Pilsen, was not a surprise: it was tested in the presence of foreign military attachés four years ago. All these guns were rifled howitzers of enormous size and power, made mobile by improvements in carriages, mounting platforms, and motor tractors. They threw shells weighing more than a ton and they were loaded with heavy charges of high

ciple of Germany's attack on these

forts was not a surprise: Europe had threshed out all the theories, and Germany's faith in big guns was understood. The surprise lay only in that the guns were bigger than any one believed Germany had bigger, indeed, than any one else had believed could be transported and that they were got so quickly to the field of battle. These guns were the 42centimetre (16inch) and the 45centimetre howit

AN AUSTRIAN TRENCH CANNON That throws small shells the short distance between the opposing lines of trenches

A FRENCH TRENCH MORTAR

Made in 1846 but in effective use in this war-a type of weapon revived by trench fighting

12,000

explosive. Their range was yards, nearly seven miles. And their fire was not "direct," that is, not horizontal-a form of fire that not only makes the missile strike a cupola a glancing blow but that also makes it strike only with the force of impact that is left in the shell aftera large share of its initial velocity has been spent in its flight. The fire of these howitzers was indirect-that is, as a ball is tossed over a wall: up, over, and down. In this kind of fire, the pro

A MODERN KNIGHT

Equipped with two ancient weapons-grenades and bombs-and protected by a steel helmet and a steel breastplate, both patterned on medieval models

jectile strikes a straight downward blow on the almost flat top of fortified gun placements, and it strikes with much greater force than the force of a direct-fired projectile.

The effect of these howitzers was overwhelming. Their shells cracked open and overturned the heaviest concrete shelters; they pulverized massive embankments. The forts at Liège crumbled away before them in fortyeight hours. Namur withstood them barely five hours.

The invention of these guns and the

consequent speedy reduction of the Belgian and French fortresses determined the strategy and tactics of the war on the western front. Henceforward, in this war, forts of the French type were to be useless. The French General Staff abandoned all plans it may have made for the defense. of Paris; this was to be a war in the open. Something of what war in the open field would be like, the Russian Japanese War had indicated ten years before. That war had shown conclusively the utility of intrenchments. They had been invented and applied in our own Civil War in siege operations, but the Japanese had shown their value as defenses against the direct fire of modern highpowered artillery.

The first weapon

of field warfare, therefore, was the shovel: purely a weapon of defense. In one guise or another it appeared in the equipment of every soldier in every army in Europesometimes as a broad bayonet with a hollow scooped in one side of it, sometimes as a meat tin to be used for the purpose in conjunction with an ordinary bayonet blade, sometimes as a real, though small, spade. "Digging themselves in" became one of the first arts of war-a cumbrous modern variant of the art of the savage dodging behind a fallen log, with the difference that the civilized soldier has to build an earthen bulwark between himself and his enemy, lying on the ground while he does it to the accompaniment shrapnel fire and

of