There is little else about machine guns to learn, they are so perfect that a machine gunner is now made in six weeks instead of six years. They have performed some remarkable work during the war, moral effect being one of their greatest assets—observe the sprightly vigour with which the officer inspecting outposts bounds away from the front of a machine gun position, where he has wandered by misadventure, when the man on guard sings out, “Machine gun here, Sir!”
The boys will be sorry to say good-bye to their vicious, stuttering pets; and let us hope that, the guns, when they are returned to Ordnance, will cease to (metaphorically) curl their lips in disdain at their humble and erratic poor relations, the Hotchkiss rifles of the Regiments.
“SARG.”
Delivered!
A wounded earth is free again,
The barriers of the East are down;
With many a mound above the slain,
The zones of battle, bare and brown,
Shall feel the tears of wintertide,
(War’s aftermath of sorrowing)