UNDER FIRE IN PARIS.

Gisborne Times, Volume XLIX, Issue 4905, 26 June 1918, Page 6

UNDER FIRE IN PARIS.

EXPERIENCES OF ONE WHO WAS THERE. The shopkeepers of Paris had just begun to bedizen their alluring windows when the dull boom of a bursting bomb, synchronising with the shrill scream of the fire engines giving the air raid “alert,” caused a hasty withdrawal of these Parisian attractions.' Then followed the quick closing of shutters and a general rush of all—employers, shop managers, all the wav down to the tiny cash gii-ls—to the cellars, there to wait for the “All clear” signal. And they waited, all day long and the signal did not come. So when night fell they came out of their burrows and found their way home as best they could, for the omnibuses were off.

Every fifteen minutes, all day long, something came from out of the heavens and burst with a crackle or a "boom according to the distance from the anxious listener.

At first everyone accepted the theory of a day-time air .raid. Then doubts arose, and late in the afternoon an ugly rumor spread that the Germans had broken through and were beginning a real bombardment of Paris. An uneasy feeling ensued. JHVI during the evening the stations leading south, west and northwest were crowded with timid and uninformed people trying to get_away from the city. Meantime, among officials and the Army people—French, English, and American speculation arose as to what the projectiles were .Some “experts” explained to me that the shells were propelled from a gun back of the lines nested in, layers of three —the outer shell, acting as an aerial gun. firing in flight, the other two during the flight propelling the thud and last one on the remainder of the long 65-mile journey. . Late in the evening I was dining in the Ave Montaigne with representative members of both branches _ or the service and their expert opinion crystallised and agreed upon the probability that the shells arrived in Paris directly from the gun or guns as the simple and direct result of the original muzzle velocity aided by the height of the trajectory— variously estimated at from 16 to 20 miles beyond the ascertained conditions of the atmospheric stratum of the eart ■ Away up there the air resistance to the shell speed' would be almost■ mlBut if the object of the Boche wasi to disorganise the b i lsn V~f® a ‘ fairs of Paris—particularly the war industries—he quite complete y succeeded for one day. Only the unknown mystifies one into inaction. When Paris knew, the second morning that the City Beautiful and Brave was actually being shelled at regular intervals by one of the two moral-effect guns f r°7 the German lines, it promptly uuHified the cfiect on its moral and went about ai fairs in its normal everyday fashion quiet, reasonable common-sense victory against a rather stupid effort a t My l e Lost talcl me of his little girl, who had gone to school that morning before the first shell dropped from the clear skies. All the children had been shepherded into the cellar; in there they were kept for seven hours, waiting for the • all clear” signal. Neither she nor the others complained, except that the space was so Emitted that the- could not play games. That was all the effect it had on them. Apparently the gun was kept at the same elevation all day long-. Accuracy is impossible at that distance, and I presume that two shells aimed in precisely the same way _ would reach the earth on the same line of direction perhaps two miles apart./ But bv the way the shells arrived, it would seem that those directing the fire were trying to drop them on a line about three miles at rmht angles to 'the point of the gun.”—Weekly Despatch. '. . ,