MAILS BY SHELLS

Evening Post, Volume XCVII, Issue 103, 3 May 1919, Page 10

MAILS BY SHELLS

PROJECTILES OF PEACE

A USE FOR AMMUNITION.

Men are being demobilised in millions, but shells in hundreds of millions, and there must be a- few who feel not a little sentimental regret at the passing away unnoticed of Britain's- faithful weapon whose prodigious abundance has been the outstanding feature of the war on land.

A shell - has all the points that go to make a good servant and a reliablemessenger. It is quick, punctual, ceitain, accurate, is not unromantic, can travel in all weathers, can carry a heavy load 5, 10, 20, or 75 miles, brooks no interference from outsiders on its journey, and is, moreover, available in such immediate and abundant, supply that it is little short of an act of folly to relegate to the scrap-heap or war-museum, without fair j investigation of its.potentialities, our vast ] and wonderful array of artillery. | Everyone is familiar with the system ' of .collecting and receipting customers' payments in big shops. The money is put into bails which roll along skeleton tubes to ths cashier's desk, where they are unscrewed, the money taken out, and the ball sent rolling back with the change and the receipt. ■ IDEA NOT NEW. Here is an army of messengers, each of them a rolling bail. Do not think that my suggestion that shells should be used in this way is altogether new. When a brigade is " going over the j top " one of the gun teams of the Stokes mortar battery is sometimes told off for a "mysterious purpose." They have been attached, with their gun, to headquarters, and supplied with a strange-looking kind of shell, that unscrews to receive messages, Which they fire to battalion headquarters across the barrage. The shell contains a smoke cartridge, and when it falls the stream of smoke shows its position, so that the battalion signallers can dash from their cover to pick it up. This method was temporarily improvised to meet certain contingencies; it contains, however, the possibilities of infinite, extension and elaboration. Instead of the casual Stokes gun, imagine that we are going to use a 9.2 howitzer, which is accurate -to a yard in twelve miles —so accurate indeed that the shell could be depended upon to arrive at the appointed spot without the need of a smoke stream to advertise its position—and can carry not a; hastily scribbled note, but a mail of, 2000 or 3000 letters. This is a big proposition, and as such is faced by the inevitable technical difficulties, but I hope to bring forward a number ,of facts based on practice to show that they are not insurmountable., ARRIVAL OF GUN MAIL. Tho first objection to strike us is that tho big shell would plunge so deepjly into the ground that to dig it up would be a prohibitively laborious process.' But a sand pit as a receiver would allow the shell to penetrate only a few feot, and the sand could easily be removed to extricate it. Bhells would also be caught in beds built of solid chalk blocks, into which they would stick nose first. Unexploded shells are. to be seen sticking in this fashion into the sides of many of the ma^sivo chalk church towers in the Sommo area. .' '. A further and elaborate method of collecting the " gun mail " would be to ha-ve a vast feii'o-concrete, beehive-shaped building divided by partitions into innumerable chambers with ■ funnel bottoms. This might constitute a "central collecting station," and guns from tho.. surrounding districts would be trained upon it. The shells would pass bodily through a number of the partitions before coming to a standstill, and then would drop through the funnels to the reception and sorting chambers, in the basement. Such a building would stand an indefinite amount of battering, especially as the shells do not explode. Even this idea is not new. Let anybody visit forts 21 and 22 de Courrieres, near Lens, where there is a great ferroconcrete building with chambers and slag funnels, and, to make tho comparison complete, shells collected in it in the manner .1 have described !

In Paris they have a pneumatic post. Notes in lil-tlo cylinders dash /miles1 through slippery tubes. Connect this up with the guns and you have a mail of lightning speed and mathematical punctuality.—By G. A. Sleggs, B.Sc, in the Daily Mail. ■