COST OF DESTRUCTION.

Feilding Star, Volume XII, Issue 2879, 25 February 1916, Page 3

COST OF DESTRUCTION.

THE SHELLS THAT FELL ON SOUOHEZ. One thing tho present war has shown us, says Mr H. Warner Allen, the representative of tho British press with the French armies, is that it costs infinitely more to destroy a vil-

lage or a town by high explosive shells than it costs to build it.

Perhaps the finest instance of this is Souchez. Sniiohevi is, as iin artil lory officer expressed it, "beautifully" destroyed. There is not ojic stone left standing on another; there is not oven a wholo stone or brick. Everything lias been ground to powder, and no man can say that here was a road or here a house, for over everything there lies the same .shapeless pile of shattered debris. Never in the history of war has any village received so many shells as Souchez, and their cost would certainly suffice to build up that village again fifty or a hundred times over. There exists n certain viaduct which was blown up at the beginning of tbo war and then repaired by tho French at a cost of about £14,000. Tho Germans disliked that, viaduct, and brought up. a. .120 (17-inch) howitzer, with a- battery or so of .220 (9-inch) howitzers, io batter it to pieces. They succeeded. It took between 50 unci HO .420 shells, and nobody troubled to count, tho number of .220 shells. But from the calculations that were made there can be little doubt that that particular piece of destruction cost the Germans over £80,000.