DAY BY DAY.

Ohinemuri Gazette, Volume XXVIII, Issue 3794, 16 July 1917, Page 3

DAY BY DAY.

86,000 WILES OF BARBED WIRE. The American Steel Export Company announces that its shipments of barbed wire to the Allied armies total more than 12,000 tens, wriich, if stretched into a single line, would extend 86,000 miles. The shipment" have been in progress ever sinco trench warfare was first undertaken on a big scale in France and Russia. ''The product is not the ordinary barbed wire," says the company, "but a special military type, very heavy and strong, with' great four-pointed barbs and painted the grim olive drab of war. The wire is made up indifferent ways, sometimes coiled in a special manner and held by a single strand, so that it might be tossec! bodily out in front of a trench and the binding strand severed, allowing the whole coil to burst open and unwind like a great clock spring, covering the front of the trench with a tangled mass impenetrable to attacking troops. On other occasions, when time permitted, the barb-wire has been woven into wonderful ant! intricate defensive works laid out on exact geometric lines. They offer the greatest possible obstruction to acl'vancing troops, and yet allow egress for the troops in the trenches when it comes their turn to advance."