and see a star rocket coming from the German trench, and pitching right beside me — during its flight it illumines everything round it with a pale yellow light

every one instinctively holds their breath, and those standing up lie down, for that which follows comes quickly! A rattle of musketry and machine guns! I get up and walk round the sentries, then lie down again suddenly crash comes the German shrapnel and for about 5 minutes the peaceful night resounds with shell fire. Silence again, and I try and sleep for a few minutes - then a watery gurgling sound over my head, for all the world like the lap of water against a boat, and it's our own shells passing over our heads to burst on the German trenches or artillery. This continues on and off throughout the night, relieved occasionally by the swish of a sentry's bullet either from our or their trench.

How far does all this touch America and our chance of successfully resisting a land attack?

CHAPTER VII

HELL ON WHEELS

Two great elements go into the matter of "superiority of fire," or, if you like, of “eye, reach, and hitting power.

One is the element that goes off. The other is the element that sets it off. Guns in war are of no use without men. The obverse is no less a fact. It must be remembered that the rifle is a gun just as much, though not just as big, as the heavy howitzer.

We speak of our "war" strength and our "peace" strength. Our peace strength is made up of the men we maintain under arms. Our war strength includes these, and, in addition, the men who would be under arms if war should come our way. While on paper the peace strength of our regular army is about 90,000 men and officers of all arms, and of our organized militia 127,000 men and officers of variegated arms, mostly infantry,—the strength

of both organizations combined, the force which we could instantly throw into battle line on the Atlantic Coast is about 50,000 men, while the mobile force we could assemble within our borders within thirty days is about 90,000 men. That is about our peace strength, and it may be said that it is our actual immediate war strength.

Within six weeks, of course, we might possibly increase our force with men who have had some military training, to something near 150,000 men. That may be considered as our semi-war strength.

Experts, including the chief men of our General Staff and several of our Secretaries of War, have estimated that for a successful defense of our continental territory against hostile aggression by any first-class nation of the world, we should have ready at the outbreak of the war a well-balanced force of not less than 500,000 men, with at least 300,000 more to be raised at once. We should without the shadow of a doubt get them-ultimately—even if war should come to-night. Yet if history teaches

anything, we should get most of them by conscription. They would be poorly trained, if trained at all. The greater the time required to collect them, the more we should have to collect. Untrained men desert faster, are captured oftener, and are killed off more rapidly than trained men. But we should get them. Sooner or later we should have the men.

Men, millions of them, are already manufactured. Iron and copper, millions of tons of it, are in the ground. In war, the men, ultimately, would be trained to shoot; minerals, ultimately, would be converted into things to shoot with. But the cost in life, money, and time, during the process of converting military resources into military strength during actual warfare, has always been, and must always be, frightful. Our actual immediate strength in the one great element, men, is shown elsewhere in these pages.

If we should find it necessary to put half a million men in the field, and if, through necessity, we should find the way to do it, how should we arm them?

Rifles? Probably. We have finished, or nearly finished, about 700,000 rifles, with something over 200,000,000 rounds of ammunition. Counting out coast artillery, an army of 500,000 men would have about 420,000 infantry and cavalry. Our field service regulations, based on the experience of all nations in war, call for 1340 rounds of ammunition behind each rifle and 1080 rounds behind each saber. If 1200 rounds be taken as a safe average, we should need a small-arms ammunition supply of about 504,000,000 rounds; and if we were to have an adequate supply for the rifles we have finished or nearly finished, as against the 200,000,000 rounds we now have, we should have about 840,000,000 rounds. It is to be remembered, however, that small-arms ammunition can be manufactured quickly and in large quantities. It is not in this shortage that the greatest danger lies.

Should we be forced into a war prepared as we are to-day, after we should have herded our men, put rifles in their hands, buckled cartridge belts around them, and sent them into