Still another factor of delay at this period is the time required by the air scouts to find the rearranged positions of the enemy guns after the advance, for these must be taken care of also before a new advance can be made.
An explanation of this form of attack shows why news dispatches have told first of an advance of the British, followed by a period of quiet, during which an attack by the French in some other section of the line was in progress. Then suddenly the scene of action switched back to the British lines again while the French were consolidating their new positions preparatory to pushing the general advance a step farther.
GERMAN EQUIVOCATION.
It also explains just what has happened when the Germans state that the "enemy penetrated our first trenches in a small sector, but his attack broke down before our second line." When the next attack is ready, of course, the former second German line is referred to as the "first," and so, on paper, as far as the uninitiated are concerned, the German publicity office is able to build up a continuous series of enemy attacks which "break down," and somehow never, never "penetrate our invincible line." Actually an advance of this nature is extremely slow, but it is sure, and it is made at the expense of tons upon tons of ammunition rather than at the expense of lives, for ammunition can be made faster than soldiers.
Even the old battering ram of feudal times with which the ancestors of Kaiser William used to knock down the castles of the baron robbers has been approximated by his warring tribes. With the retreat of the German troops from Flanders the Allied forces found crude battering rams such as have been shown in the stirring "movies" when the ancient warriors stormed the gates of the city.
One of such devices was in the form of an upright frame made of heavy timbers. An immense log was suspended from the cross-piece by a heavy chain. An iron band circled one end of the log which was used for battering purposes and at the opposite end were handles, used by the operators in their nefarious work. The ram was used to batter in the doors of houses which had been locked or barricaded against the German soldiers. In their most destructive moods, it is charged that they used these devices to destroy the standing walls of houses and cottages after they had been gutted by fire. The Germans would not permit even so much as a wall to stand which might be used by the poor peasant in rehabilitating himself and building a new home.
NEW METHOD OF WARFARE.
The new method of warfare, with men working in trenches and dugouts and millions of shells breaking over head, while missiles rain all about, necessitated the development of some device to protect the heads of the fighters. Therefore the steel helmet.
It has been shown that, due to trench warfare, about seventy-five per cent of the wounded on the western front had been hit with shrapnel or pieces of shell traveling at a low velocity and therefore had torn wounds and in many cases smashed bones. About three per cent of the wounds were in the head and about fifteen per cent in the face or neck. This led to the adoption by the French of a steel helmet called after its inventor, Adrian. The helmets were first used in May, 1915. That their use is justified is shown by statistics. Among fifty-five cases of head wounds, forty-two happened to soldiers without helmets.
Twenty-three of these had fractured skulls, while the remaining nineteen had bad scalp wounds. Of the thirteen who wore helmets, not one had a skull fracture. Five had slight wounds only, while none of those who had worn a helmet died. Quite a number of those who had not did.