OLD DEVICES REVIVED.

Evening Star, Issue 12396, 9 January 1905, Page 6

OLD DEVICES REVIVED.

The siege of Port Arthur has shown that at least .two old-time devices for war may have to be revived. The grenade and armor have both come again into play, and proved effective. Except that the missiles which the Japanese have been employing have been thrown by small mortars instead of by hand, there is no practical difference between those now used and those which our Grenadier Guards were raised to throw. With their great bearskin caps, the finest men in the British were Grenadiers, and held the place of honor—on the right when in line, in* front when in column. Nowadays the name is employed only as the title of the first three battalions of the Foot Guards. Hand-grenades were devised for use against masses of troops in trenches, and where it was impossible to throw them by hand they were- rolled over the parapet of a trench or wall by means of a wooden trough. The greater range and accuracy of modern rifles were supposed to have killed this means of warfare for ever. It is to be assumed that the armor which the Japanese artificers have been mnVrng for their men is of greater resistance than that which was anciently used in this country. In the armory at the Tower may be seen many a breastplate with .a hole by which a bullet has entered and a man's life come out. Napoleon raised Cain among his lancers when he ordered them to adopt the cuirass. "They rebelled," he said, "but I made them obey, and they adopted them." And we know from Wellington of their ups and downs at Quatre-Bras. "They came up very well," he was wont to say; adding with a chuckle "but they went down better. After a volley those that were not kilted were so encumbered by their cuirasses and jackboots that they could not get up, but lav sprawling and kicking like so many turned turtles." Stall, we axe going back to armor for sieges, that is evident, and Napoleon's judgment may, after all, be vindicated. This going back'to the past seems to accord with his own experience* "Sixty battles I fought, and—well, I learned nothing but what I knew when I fought the first," so he said.