WOUND MANY.

Taranaki Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 16037, 23 January 1918, Page 7

WOUND MANY.

RATHER- THAN KILL A FEW

We are told in “The Note-book of an Intelligence Officer,” "by Major T. Wood, that the British have reduced the bursting force of their .shells in order to wound rather than To kill, smeo ih© wounded man becomes a liability, wnicli the dead man is not;— Every wounded man must, if possible, be saved, not merely from mptives of mercy, but also from the fact that lio is strategically a valuable asset to bis nation. Yet to carry away and give medical attention to'thousands of men struck down in battle requires so many attendants that it decidedly reduces the man-power available for active military duty. In any great battle the large number of wounded soldiers seriously retard and clog the movements of the conflicting forces, but this is more ©specially true of the victorious army, for as it advances and captures the terrain recently in possession of the enemy, it has to care not only for its own wounded, but also for the wounded of the retreating army. The plan to wound a largo number of the enemy, rather than to kill a few. lias been achieved in other ways besides that of employing relatively high charges in shells* Some of the combatants have, for instance, recently reduced the calibre of Jibe bullets which they use in their machine, guns. This accomplishes the. double purpose of increasing the number of men wounded and also of reducing the total weight of the munitions which must be- carried to the front—an element on which the result of more than one battle has turned. In .other words, by using a smaller size bullet in machine guns, the same weight of munitions will put put of action many more men than would be hit when a large calibre is used, although the percentage of deaths will be much lower.