A Howitzer Battery
One further fact concerning artillery may interest those who follow the present campaigns. In all the older famous battles the greatest efforts were made to drag the artillery up the hills and have it crown the heights. According to recent strategy it chooses rather low-lying protected spots. Howitzers can shoot right over a hill and have the shell curve and descend on the other side. The calculations as to just where it will strike are made with astounding accuracy, even though the goal itself may be invisible. The guns are being constantly improved, but the greatest secrecy is observed with regard to them. They are shrouded as they pass through the streets and no one can inspect them without a written order.
Observation Column
The low situation has its great advantages as well as its disadvantages, but the latter can be counteracted. In order to be able to overlook the field, each battery now has an observation ladder or column, of which the parts can be telescoped into short space and carried between two wheels. When desired it is projected into the air. One advantage of this new invention is that the wheeled observation ladder can be sent off to quite a distance carrying a portable telephone by means of which it is possible at all times to communicate with the gunners.
Observation Ladder
Many cannon now have telescopes attached to them to assist the gunner in taking aim. When we reflect that some of the guns can shoot five and six miles, the necessity of this will be apparent.
For storming fortifications there are special heavy siege guns. A modern fortress is something very different from a medieval or even from an early nineteenth century one. The old city walls, however solidly built, are now regarded as mere pleasant bits of antiquity, and in dozens of German towns have been razed to the ground and converted into rings or boulevards. So in the city of Cologne, in Ulm. In their place we now have groups of sunken guns, of protected batteries and of underground bomb-proof rooms with walls of reinforced concrete twelve and fifteen feet thick. Here and there armored turrets project a few feet above the ground. Some of the rooms are large enough for a whole company of infantry. The sunken guns can rise from their resting-places, fire their charges and sink back into their beds. Germany has twenty-eight land forts in all, of which nine are modern in every regard, and eight coast fortifications. Should the Russians enter Prussia we may hear much of the great forts at Königsberg, Graudenz and Thorn, at Danzig, Kulm and Marienburg, or of the Silesian forts Glogau, Neisse and Glatz, which played a part already in the wars of Frederick the Great. In the west, Metz and Strasburg have been immeasurably strengthened since they passed into German hands, and Mainz, Coblenz, Cologne, Germersheim and Wesel are all formidable. To the south are Ulm and Ingolstadt, while in the north are Kustrin and Spandau, the latter but a few miles from Berlin. In Saxony is the Königstein, which, by reason of its natural position, is considered as impregnable as any fortress can be.