THE MAKING OF TRENCHES Upper picture: finishing the digging. Middle picture: the skeleton work of an underground bomb-proof

shelter. Lower picture: the bomb-proof completed and occupied

DETAILS OF TRENCH CONSTRUCTION Upper picture: the finished rampart, with loopholes for rifles. Middle picture: a wire screen that can be unrolled to cut off part of a trench under attack. Lower picture: a German trench during actual operations, showing the use of the trench periscope

ciple of Germany's
attack

on these
forts was not a sur-
prise: Europe had
threshed out all the
theories, and Ger-
many's faith in big
guns was under-
stood. The sur-
prise lay only in
that the guns were
bigger than any one
believed Germany
had — bigger, in-
deed, than any one
else had believed
could be trans-
ported — and that
they were got so
quickly to the field
of battle. These
guns were the 42-
centimetre (163-

AN AUSTRIAN TRENCH CANNON inch) and the 45- That throws small shells the short distance between centimetre howit

the opposing lines of trenches

Copyright byUnderwood & 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 (1 2-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

Copyright by International News Service A BIG GRENADE OF THE ROCKET TYPE

explosive. Their
range was 12,000
yards, nearly seven
miles. And their
fire was not “di-
rect,” 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 FRENCH TRENCH MORTAR

a wall: up, over,

A MODERN KNIGHT Made in 1846 but in effective use in this war-a and down. In this type of weapon revived by trench fighting

Equipped with two ancikind of fire, the pro- ent 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 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

WHAT A SOLDIER SEES THROUGH A TRENCH PERISCOPE The device consists of a tube containing mirrors that reflect from one above to another below the image caught by the upper one. With it a soldier can see what is happening in front of his rampart without exposing himself consequent speedy reduction of the Belgian of field warfare, therefore, was the shovel: and French fortresses determined the purely a weapon of defense. In one guise strategy and tactics of the war on the or another it appeared in the equipment of western front. Henceforward, in this war, every soldier in every army in Europe forts of the French type were to be useless. sometimes as a broad bayonet with a holThe French General Staff abandoned all low scooped in one side of it, sometimes as plans it may have made for the defense a meat tin to be used for the purpose in of Paris; this was to be a war in the open. conjunction with an ordinary bayonet Something of what war in the open field blade, sometimes as a real, though small,

would be like, the spade. “Digging
Russian - Japanese themselves in " be-
War had indicated came one of the first
ten years before. arts of war — a
That war had cumbrous modern
shown conclusively variant of the art
the utility of in- of the savage dodg-
trenchments. They ing behind a fallen
had been invented log, with the differ-
and applied in our ence that the civil-
own Civil War in ized soldier has to
siege operations, build an earthen
but the Japanese bulwark between
had shown their himself and his
value as defenses enemy, lying on the
against the direct ground while he
fire of modern high- does it to the ac-
powered artillery. companiment of

The first weapon shrapnel fire and