"HOT-AIR" SQUADS IN FUTURE WARS

Evening Post, Volume CXXVI, Issue 50, 27 August 1938, Page 27

"HOT-AIR" SQUADS IN FUTURE WARS

"Every budding Napoleon is rushing into print, drawing lessons from mechanised warfare as practised in Spain. Well, sir, they all make me tired." The speaker held forth at a sidewalk table in front of the Cafe de la Paix, writes tne Pans correspondent of the "New York Times." Every other minute an acquaintance would stroll up and address him as "Colonel." Sear r red, bemedalled, polyglot, of nondescript nationality, he had served in the World War (one gathered) with the Foreign Legion; to his intense disgust the Italians had kept him out of Ethiopia; he had been fighting on the Government side in Spain and he was preparing to try his luck in China. He continued:— "What's an armoured car but an improved war chariot? What's a tank but the steel offspring of one of Hannibal's elephants? Yet these so-called experts are hypnotised by them. Let me tell you this: The only mechanical .novelty on the Spanish front is the loud-speaker. There's mechanised warfare for you! And full of possibilities. "Round about midnight every one

in the trench is drowsy. Suddenly a voice rings out, a. typical lop-sergeant voice: 'Up and at 'era, boys! They're attacking! Let 'em have it!'. Every one stumbles out of shelter. As heads appear above the parapet one after another good man is hit. Then you realise it was only a false alarm—via a loudspeaker pushed into no man's land. "You settle down again, only to be aroused in the same way an hour later. To vary the programme, the top-ser-geant voice gives you an earful of propaganda: 'You birds are being fed on beans and salt cod. We've got plenty of honest beef and white bread and good wine. Don't it tempt you? There's plenty for those who care to cross the lines!' j "Of course, both sides can go in for this. We're going back to the noise of the captains and the shouting. From armour-plated loud-speakers at strategic points will come such a roaring and a bellowing,.each one trying to drown out the other, that men will go stark, staring mad. Someone had better be quick and invent an ear mask." It seems Sherman had no idea of how hellish war can be made.