MILITARY AUTOMOBILES

New Zealand Mail, 29 November 1900, Page 59

MILITARY AUTOMOBILES

The account sent to the "Daily Graphic by its correspondent of the French army manoeuvres contains the subjoined paragraph: —"Though the troops have up to the present been manoeuvring some distance from Chartres the distance varying from 20 to 60 kilometres, the fact that General Brugere, Generalissimo of the French Army, and director of the manoeuvres, has established his headquarters here causes a continual coming and gping of officers of the staff, aides-de-camp, and orderlies, on foot, on horseback, on cycles> and in automobiles. This last innovation is the great feature of this yt r’s manoeuvres, and all day long the street#' ! echo with the puffing and the rattle of the/fehicle of the future. There are automobiles of every kind, tricycles, two-seated, fourseated, and eight-seated carriages, driven, by petroleum and electricity, and long lines of transport waggons, veritable trams, puffing slowly along, drawn by the Dion-Bouton and Scotte traction engines. General Brugere has boldly accepted' the innovation and’ attends the manoeuvres in a four-seated Panhard-Lavasseur, whose wild meteoric career is already a legend throughout the department. The rate at which he travels certainly inspires awe. One sees a distant speck in the road three or four miles away, travelling in the midst of a cloud of dust. Five minutes later the speck has taken the form of a white-painted automobile, which rushes by like a whirlwind. At the instant it passes through the dust cloud one sees the Generalissimo of the French army and his aides-de-camp, their faces covered with black masks with glass-covered eyeholes, and a minute later the vehicle, travelling at 60 kilometres an hour, is again a speck in the distance. The automobile of the Generalissimo occasionally gives an illustration of the hare and the tortoise. The other morning it passed my colleague of the “Times” and myself travelling like a meteor as usual, but five kilometres further the steady trot of our horses enabled us to overtake General Brugere, whose mechanic was wrestling with a burst* tyre.”