The French, German, Russian, Austrian, and Hungarian infantry are all armed with long, heavy, and ill-balanced rifles carrying detachable bayonets. These rifles are very poorly sighted in comparison with our new Springfield. It would be very difficult or impossible to do good shooting with them, as measured from an American standpoint. In my personal experience there have been numberless cases where dispatch bearers, automobiles, scouts, pickets, and patrols were exposed at very short range to the fire of bodies of French or German troops without any casualties whatsoever occurring.
The one idea of the German infantry seems to be to shoot as much and as rapidly as possible. I have several times observed where German infantry have taken up a position in the open, and fired 120 rounds a man, more or less, as a matter of course.
I have nowhere observed the use of any semi-automatic rifles, nor of either silencers or special sights for sharpshooters.
TRENCHES AND CONCEALMENT
In October I was in the neighborhood of Lassigny and Roye where heavy fighting was and had been going on. There was a little village called Erches to the northwest of these places. Here were the French advance trenches. I was in this village during the height of operations and was told that we were then only 150 or 200 yards from the German trenches. Standing behind a house corner in this village of Erches, I could see nothing unusual in any direction. I could see no signs of French or German activity nor of life of any kind, although the French infantry trenches extended to our right and left and the Germans were directly in front of us. The landscape which spread away in all directions looked perfectly normal and unbroken except for a few shell craters. The only manifestations of activity were the distant rumbling of guns, and the shrapnel bursting over our heads. Although I stayed there for more than an hour, the only Frenchmen I saw were a few who joined me behind the house; they came from trenches hidden within it, or from an underground trench, the opening of which was behind the house. I recount this to accent the concealment of all troops in this war. Trenches are made to resemble the landscape in which they are placed. If they are in a brown mowed field, hay is scattered over all fresh earth, and if they are made in pasture land all the earth is carefully carried away or is spread out and sodded over.
CAVALRY
The Austrian cavalry unit is the division, which is accompanied by the horse artillery in considerable strength. They are not accompanied by cyclists or armored automobiles.
During the first six months of the war, at least, in the Austrian, Hungarian, British, and French armies no newspaper or war correspondents were allowed to view the actual operations on any condition whatsoever. No press representative saw any battle with the Austrian, Hungarian, British, or French armies, with one single exception which took place in France, when one day during September certain press representatives managed to see the bombardment along the Aisne. I make this statement with the full knowledge that many correspondents state they have seen battle actions. I have been able to investigate such statements on numerous occasions, and invariably found them to be fabrications, usually without even a foundation of truth. Reporters frequently left the intrenched camp at Paris, were arrested before traveling any great distance, and confined for days and weeks. They then returned to the city and told hair-raising stories of their experiences at the front.