THE COLONIST. PUBLISHED EVERY MORNING. MONDAY JUNE 14, 1915. MUNITIONS OR MEN.

Colonist, Volume LVII, Issue 13793, 14 June 1915, Page 4

THE COLONIST. PUBLISHED EVERY MORNING. MONDAY JUNE 14, 1915. MUNITIONS OR MEN.

Ii is good to read of tho effect Mr. Lloyd George's "businesslike and iinrhetorical" speeches to masters and men engaged in mechanical industries whoso attention may be turned to the all-important national work of producing munitions. Early in his crusade, Mr. Lloyd George announced that he felt the machine beginning to move, and it is evident that it is now moving to considerable purpose, and with an effect that will shortly be felt on the battlefields of France and Flanders. "Don't let us hesitate to waste ammunition in order to economise in men," was a remark of General Journee, and another French officer, LieutenantColonel Boissoiiet, has explained in the "Temps" some of the reasons which make a prodigious expenditure of ammunition, an outlay beyond all precedent, a necessary condition of victory in this war. The French "75" is a weapon] of marvellous precision, but, even with a new gun and the shells in perfect condition, after a-great number of shots from-a distance of 3000 metres tlie shells will be found to have fallen within a radius of 96 metres, and half the shells will have fallen in a strip of about 24 metres. The gunner, therefore, has to regulate his fire so that the object aimed at will be in the centre cf this most thickly covered strip, a task which against trenches, even after aeroplane reconnaissance, requires ffl considerable expenditure of ammunk tion; and when it is remembered that the trench itself is not much more than a yard or so wide, it will be realised that for every three or four shells which burst in the trench there is a vast number which explode before it or behind it. The need for heavy shell expenditure against trenches will beccme more urgent still after the siege period is over and real field fighting again becomes possible, when the artillery will have, not the fixed target ci" the trench line, but tho thin mobile ranks of the skirmishers, as its objective. Against moving infantry, unless it is advancing in close formation, regulated fire is a matter of. some difficulty. Infantry which finds itself between the first shell which jaas burst in front of them do not await the avalanche which is to follow, but rush rapidly forward beyond the first short shell, where they fling themselves to the ground under what cover they can fiud. The artillery knows that they are somewhere in the neighbourhood, and to begin again the tir do reglage would only be a loss of time, so that the only thing for the artillery to do is to shorten its range by 100 yards or so and sweep the whole of the zone where they imagine the enemy's infantry to be with shrapnel. A battery of 75 millimetre guns fires no less than 80 shells a minute, and it is only with rapid, intense fire that the shrapnel fragments can sweep a whole countryside and break the enemy's attack. The same thing applies when the artillery is taking part in an offensive. They ha% fe to cover the whole zone of tho enemy's front with a shower of shells, forcing the gunners to take shelter and pinning the infantry to the ground while their own troops are advancing to the. attack.