MODERN WARFARE.

Colonist, Volume LVII, Issue 13826, 22 July 1915, Page 8

MODERN WARFARE.

MECHANISM AND INGENUITY,

A special -of the Christchurch * 'Press writing from Warsaw under date May 18, supplies highly interesting particulars of the devices of combatants under modern war conditions. He says, inter alia: — "Heroic war is diverging into unheroic paths. Mechanism and ingenuity are submerging muscles and .spirit. The new way to win is to fool as much as possible your enemy, and to expose as little as possible your skin Ju that umvarh'ke way the struggle for Poland is going. As the war gets less mobile, and becomes moreand more stable, brilliant charges and bold deeds grow rarer and less valuable, and cunning and engineering replace them. You cease trying to beat the foe expensively with the bayonet, and do your best to beat him cheaply with spades, machines, and tricks. Best .'it this are the Germans, for they are technically the ■'best equipped, and they have most to economise with men. The German new war of ingenuity is thoroughly organised. FieldMarshal Hindenburg's staff, say prisoners, has a special department of engineer inventors and planners of ruses and tricks Those officers are freed from all duties in connexion with strategy or tactics, so that they may concentrate their time devising ways tr. outwit us. The new German war of rases bears internal evidence that it springs fiom a central quarter. When a new mcohnical device or a ruse is tried it is usually tried all along the line or simultaneously at different isolated, remote points. From this we conclude that a central brain inspires all devices, and that the new kind of warfare has been deliberately adopted by Hindenburg's staff. Germany first showed her superiority in war mechanism when her armies last November retreated from Poland. Then Hmdcnburg put into operation "a wholly now machine for destroying steel raiis This is a big machine, mounted on a six-wheeled bogie, and weighing twenty tons, which, as it goes along, tears up and bends into uselessnes>s the rails behind it. Near the Pilitsa, Ilindenburg has in use a road-destroyer. The. road-destroyer works liko a dredger, but instead of buckets it has a chain of picks. The destroyer moves at the rate of three .•miles an hour, and tears up and totally destroys the road behind it. Ou the lower Bsura, in their night attacks ihe Germans use "entanglement bridges." .. The entanglement bridge is.a short length of wire-backed canvas. This is rolled before a; creeping man, whom it -.protects against rifle bullets. Other, creeping men help him quickly tn unroll if. a:ncl throw it ove<- : jit ."jnakos a r-l&vej; bridgo. Stim© infantryirien while creeping forwards against entangle-

ments push before themselves steel shields. • Thi shields are bullet-proof afc long ranges". Austrians are trying an apparatus like, but larger than, the armoured platform which the Germans used against entanglements. It is i called a "'Scliiebor''—a "pusher." It consists of a strip of steel ten yards, long by one yard high, mounted on wheels. Behind it crawl tho attacking infantry. The shield is joined in four places, so that it can h* shortened or used in sections. Against tho "Schicber" aid the German protective devices the only ~-, emecly is hand grenades. •

All our trendies and artillery positions are so masked that German airmen cannot see them. The enemy not only masks his trerches; he makes dummy trenches. When snow lay on the ground he scraped the snow away parallel to his front, and allowed our reconnaissance aviators to conclude that the brown streak was a trench. Now there is no snow. The Germans scrape a streak of earth to a depth of a few inches; scatter on it a few old uniforms, and parade it, as their trench, while their real trenches may be* a mile away. Both sides are veiling their movements by burning damp straw. For days the country is veiled in smoke. - Behind this go on- important movements of infantry. Aviators are baffled. When Hindenburg was re-grouping his troops in East Prussia with a view to attacking us on the Masurian Jakes, he burnt vast quantities of straw, and created clouds fifty miles long. On the day of my last visit to the Sokatcheff position the German front was veiled in smoke. Sometimes the Germans make smoke veils as, feints. Field-Marshal Hindenburg's favourite present device is to ma'ko elaborate field fortifications where none are needed. This is meant as a trap for us. For the steep snowcovered slopes of the Carpathians, Staff Engineer Uspensky (Russian) devised a system of snow-transport. He built flat-bottomed snow-boats, each mounted on four very broad runners, resembling skis. These snow-boats are coupled in long trains, and hauied up the mountain sides by man-worked windlasses. On March 17th, during a fight on the D-ukla Pass, this device saved a. Russian force from being cut up. A Itussian blockhouse was attacked and nearly overwhelmed. Owing to deep snow reinforcements could not be got up in time. Three infantrymen were put in each of Uspensky's snowboats, and in half an hour four companies Avere rushed to the blockhouse. Tho Austrians were beaten off. Uspensky has also invented a snow carriage platform for light artillery. These platforms are as big as the floor of an averaged sized room. They can be taken to pieces and carried as single planks, and they can be put together in ten minutes. They are used for floating field-guns over the snow plains. The Austrians ar.e copying Uspensky's snow-boats, and the German army at Koniushki has gun platforms which resemble ours. On the Lupkow Pass in the last days of March tho Austrians created a snow and ice fortress. Two battalions of Alpine Jaegers, on skis, with machineguns on sledges, advanced down a slope where the snow lay five feet deep. The Jaegers dug trenches in tho snow. In order to make their snow trenches bullet-proof the Austrians poured water on the parapets, and let them I freeze during thy night. They (further beat the snow hard, turning it into ft hard mass. When morning came, the enemy were in an impregnable position, and they poured in a heavy rifle and mitrailleuse fire in our trenches.