“HOT-AIR" SQUADS

Greymouth Evening Star, 6 September 1938, Page 3

“HOT-AIR" SQUADS

FUTURE WAR WEAPONS “Every budding Napoleon Is rushing into print, drawing lessons front mechanised warfare as practised in Spain. Well, sir, they till make me tired.” The speaker held- forth at. a sidewalk table in front of the Cafe de la J’ai.x. writes the Paris correspondent of the ‘'New York Times.” Every other minute an acquaintance would stroll up ami address him as “Colonel.” Scarred, bemedalled, polyglot, of nondescript nationality, he had served in the World War (one gathered) with the Coreign Legion; to his intense disgust. the Italians had kept him out of E! bh pia: he had been fighting on the rnmciit side in Spain and he was .preparing to try his luck in China. He continued: — “What’s an armoured car but an I improved war chariot? "What’s a I tank but the steel offspring of one of 1 Hannibal’s elephants’? Yet these socalled experts are hypnotised by them Let me (ell you this: The only mechanical novelty on the Spanish front .is the loud-speaker. There’s mechan- | ised warfare for you! And full of possibilities. “Round about midnight every one in the trench is drowsy. Suddenly a voice rings out, a typical top-sergeant | voice: ‘Up and at ’em, 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. loud-speaker 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-sergeant voice gives yon an earful of propaganda: ‘You birds are being fed on beans and salt cod. We’ve got. plenty of honest beef and whitebread and good wine. Don't it tempt yon? There's plenty for those who came to cross the lines!’ “Of course, both sides can go in for (his. We’re going back to the noise of the captains and his 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 mud. Someone had better be quick and invent, an ear mask.’’ it seems Sherman hud no idea of how hellish war can be made.