NOTES AND COMMENTS.

Press, Volume LIV, Issue 16213, 16 May 1918, Page 7

NOTES AND COMMENTS.

Marie Botchkareva, once commander of Russia's woman regiment, known as the Legion of Death, makes a pathetic reappearance when the memorv of the stirring times in which her namo won world-wide fame is be „ obliterated by the mad follies of cho Bolshevik. She came to the fron > the timo when kerensky ® e ut . stir the Russian armies and nation of the indifference regarding the war into which they lapsed after the hrst revolution. But betore that she U.ul had experience of war as a husband was killed in battle • vears ago, and thereupon, at tho °=> _ 22—che was married when she wn* seventeen—she said good-bye to hei parents., and trudged off to the headquarters of her husband s regiment, journey which occupied weeks.

She served for mere than a year m the trenohe?. being wounded three times, and also sustaining shell-shock. In the Lake Xaroch battles, there was a time, when all the officers having been killed, tho men lost heart and lay down, refusing to attack. At this juncture Madame Botchkareva dashed forward, calling on the men to follow her, ana thus saving the situation. l'or tins (rallant conduct she was awarded the of St. George, tho Russian V .L., and the thanks of tho Government. Earlv last venr, when on leave, she went to' Petrograd and was presented to Kerenskv, who asked her what she most wanted. * "I want to. form a women s battalion," she replied, "wlncn will lead men into battle if they will not; co themselves." Her wish was granted, and the - "Legion of Death" was the result. It foufxht well in several engagements, and in the Bolshevik rioting, later on, it defended the "Winter Pa'ane in Petrograd, in which the members of tho Kerensky Government were sitting, against the fury of tho mob, which eventually treated many of the women atrociously. Now that Russia is, for tho timo. at and probably for a long while out of tho war, Madame Botchkareva is making her way to France, there to fight the Germans who killed her. husband. Under other conditions, this illiterate and devotedly patriotic Russian peasant girl might nave been a modern Joan of Arc.

Extraordinary interest -was created 1 in England arid tlie United States by the reports of the shelling of Paris by the German super-guns, of which wo have heard from time to time in the cables. Some artillery experts wero inclined to disbelieve at first that the shells came from a gun at nil, but when the fact that this was the case was established beyond doubt, thoories as to the make and size of the gun and of tho projectilo, and as to the explosive used, filled much space 111 the papers. The supposed length of the gun varied from 70 feet to as many yards, the size of tho shells from oight to 21 inches, and the height they would lhave to attain to reach a, target over CO miles away from 18 to 384 miles. Tho first facts dribbled from tho front, whore German prisoners gave away quite willingly such knowledge as thev possessed of the gun, their statements being corroborated by examination of fragments of the shells:

One theory which found great favour was that the shells contained a chanical device to prolong their flight. Another, "which "was oven moro fantas- ] tic, and, of course, even more widely Accepted, was that each shell contained a second charge timed to fire when a certain portion of tho flight had been completed, and release another smaller sholl, which was the ono actually to fall in Paris. This suggestion was improved upon by an American engineer, who said that in 1910, when on a hunting trip in Colorado with a German naval engineer, tho latter, "in a burst of camp-fire confidence, told liim of an idea for -i long-range gun which he had submitted to the German Government.. Shorn of technical details, this idea was based on shells within shells, cach in turn becoming a "gun" to discharge the ono inside it. The latter would be timed to explode out of the outer shell just before the latter reached the apex of its flight. Within the second stiol.l •would be a third, which in turn Bad| been timed fo explode from the. encasoment of the second projectilo just boforo the apex of the flight of the second shell was reached. And so the flight would be increased until five explosions in all lmd been attained, counting the initial discharge from the gun on tho ground. This ingenious German, whoso namo happened to be Eggers, dwelt upon the fact that each shell would bo rifled" within to preserve the "spin"— and therefore the orjginal direction — of the succeeding projectiles. The bits of the shells picked up in Paris showedt that they -were rifled. Obviously, therefore, there is surely no necessity to | elaborate the argument. The thing was proved, past all disputing.

• There was, of- course, the usual crop of inventors whoso plans for constructing vast long-range guns of extraordinary destnictiveness had been ruthlessly turned down by incompetent anrl conservative military authorities. One of these was the French professor who submitted last year to the French Inventions Department an idea which he had worked out in co-operation with a Russian genius. It was intended, by his device, to increase the range of guns three or four times by tho use of a special fuse which was to surround tho shell during the whole of its flight with a layer of warm air, thus reducing the air resistance. American ordnance officers are understood to have submitted to the Secretary of the Navy plans for a super-gun for which common report claimed a range of 105 miles. But they admitted thnt they did not think its military value would make it worth tho time and money that would have to be spent in making and testing such a weapon.

There is a consensus of opinion that the shells from the super-gun have little force, and this view is not affected by the dreadful damage inflicted by the shell which struck a crowded churcti on Good Friday. There were special circumstances which contributed. The shell struck the north side of the cliurch high above tlje ground, and brought down part of the roof, besides making a great holo in the wall. Nearly all the debris fell inwards upon the crowd of worshippers sixty feet below, covering tho ontirc floor space between the lofty columns on each side of the church. The interior of the building presented a terrible scene. According to cne visitor, the enormous mass of stone, crumbled into all shapes and sizes, lay in the middle of tho nave end piled to about the same height as the high altar, which was not damaged. The side aisles were littered with less cumbersomo wreckage, and the pavement was covered with gray dust. All the stained glass windows, of which were of' historical interest, were shattered. At that time, .a day after the i disaster, nearly a hundred dead bodies 1 had been recovered from the ruins, and j almost as many people had been taken; out seriously wounded. A good many. persons left Paris to escape the period- j ual bombardments which brought the city into the actual zone of war, but the rest of the population settled down in a day or two to accept the .visitation philosophically, and since then more. than one of the guns has been destroyed by French bombing aviators. As a j means to help in winning the war the ' new weapon has been quite negligible.