FRANCE'S TRANSPORTATION RESOURCES.
At the outset of the war France is said to have had 100,000 passenger cars, 25,000 motorbuses, taxicabs and motorcycles and 10,000 motortrucks available for military use, and was able to give the various departments of her military organization excellent transportation service. Besides this, she had squads of automobile aeroplane cannon, and about 84 12-centimeter and 15 5-centimeter Rimailho howitzers of the armored artillery type. Russia is said to have been weak in automobile equipment, having less than a thousand trucks in the Empire available for military use; but this number was rapidly increased, upward of half a thousand having been purchased within a short time.
Austria and Germany together are said to have had something like 1500 trucks and about 20,000 passenger cars available for army use. At the start Germany alone had 250 armored automobiles, several score of searchlight automobiles, or night scout cars, probably 8000 motorcycles and more than 500 motor-driven field guns, besides the big tractors used to draw the heavy howitzers. Aside from this, practically all the motor vehicles in the country were commandeered, numbering upward of 75,000.
While they are stationary devices, the forts which were stormed by the Germans at Liege and Antwerp are properly part of the military equipment used in the war. These forts, known as turret forts, are described on preliminary inspection as looking like a row of huge tortoise or turtle shells rising a few feet above the ground. The shell is, however, a shell of chilled steel. Through it the guns protrude and are operated very much like the guns on a battleship, the turret revolving. Under the dome are vaults and the compartments of concrete, containing the mechanism for moving the turrets, operating the guns, lifting the big shells and handling the ammunition generally.
The fortifications, which at Antwerp included nine intrenched sections, were regarded as almost impregnable; but when they were built there were no such field guns as the famous 42-centimeter guns which the Germans brought to the attack. The forts themselves had no guns larger than a 7-inch caliber.
FRANCE'S ARMORED FIGHTING MACHINES.
In the matter of movable guns, the French and Germans both had them mounted on armored trains. One such train used by the French included armored locomotive, flat cars on which were mounted the guns in "barbettes," or steel turrets, and completely protected armored cars, used to transport troops or detachments of men.
A feature of the train was the observation tower. It was mounted upon what would ordinarily be the cab of the locomotive. Such towers have in one form or another become very common in the war. One type resembles the motortruck ladder and platform devices used by the man who repairs electric lights and wires in our city streets. Another is patterned after the hook and ladder truck of the fire department. The tower, or ladder, is raised after the fashion of the ladders in fighting a fire. A couple of soldiers turn a crank, and the ladders are raised to a perpendicular position and extended high into the air on the sliding or telescope principle.
The German and Austrian engineers also utilize observation ladders of a less complicated mechanical nature. In use, and with a soldier perched on top of them, they remind one of the toy devices with which we played as children, using the slotted acrobats to do wonderful things atop the "ladders." The ladders are carried in short sections, which may be fastened together in a variety of ways, but a good idea of the manner in which the ladders are used may be obtained if you can imagine a letter Y made of ladders and turned upside down, with a soldier standing on top of it.