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About The Sunday Oregonian. (Portland, Ore.) 1881-current | View Entire Issue (Oct. 4, 1914)
3 THE SUNDAY OKEGOXIAX, POKTLAXD, OCTOBER 4, 1914. E D 7 fl As 0 Dibits ziie Costofieeii in sJ - s. 9 me A S2 c-. - V.) - i t-Zto -S22. r TiT ItENE BACHE. IVE million dollars a day thrown away in powder and projectiles! Military experts say this a a con servative estimate of the cost of ammu nition expended during 24 hours of hard fighting in the recent battles between the French and Germans in France. War is expensive. A rifle cartrlasre costs 2 cents. It taki:s 100 such cartridges, . on an aver age, to kill one man. Hence it ap pears that the expense of taking one Soulier's life by this means is $25. Tlie infantryman goes into battle with 100 rifle cartridges in his belt and 120 more in bandoliers over his shoul ders 220 in all. He can tire 10 aimed shots a minute. But the great de struction of lite in the present war teems to be accomplished not by small-arm bullets, but by shrapnel. Bhrapnel ordinarily is fired from three Inch field guns and each shot costs $10. In the battle of Liao-YanK. in Man churia, 128 Russian guns (in the thick est of the fighting) nred 108,000 rounds of slirapnel at the Japanese in two days. This is a. matter of military record. At 0 a shot this meant an expenditure of considerably over $1,000,000 for those guns alone only a fraction of the artillery engaged on the Kussian side. Roughly estimated, the German artil lery comprises about 10,000 field guns and howitzers. The French have 8000 in all, the Russians 10,000, the Aus trians 4000. the British expeditionary army 1000, the Servians 1500 and the Belgiums 1000. To fire all these can non once, at $10 a shot, would cost $355,000. As a matter of fact, however, the expenses would be much greater, for many of the guns are of much larger caliber than three-inch ft-. $ 4 (:J - : -. . - 3, vi s-;; ...aas".. r E'fiV::.: 21 to conceal their artillery in such a way balls, in the rear of which is a burst- that the French could not attack it successfully with their own guns. An important advantage of this type of weapon, by the way, is that, being shorter and proportionately lighter than the field gun, it can be much more easily and rapidly transported. Using a smaller powder charge, with Six- less recoil, it demands a carriage not inch shrapnel cost $42 apiece, and the 11-inch projectiles thrown by the great breech-loading rifles of the Germans eet the Kaiser's government back $400 every time they are fired. But stay. These figures cover only the value of the projectiles. There is the gunpowder to be paid for all of it of the smokeless kind, which costs 60 cents a pound. It is burned by the ton in such battles as have been going on recently in France and in Galicia, and comes to a pretty penny. nearly so heavy. For a given weight of gun and carriage it will fire twice as big a projectile. Once upon a time there was a Ma jor in the British army, a clever ar tillerist, whose name was Shrapnel. It was he who invented the kind of pro jectile that bears his name and which may fairly be called the deadliest de stroyer of human life ever contrived. In modern warfare it has taken the place of the old-time "cannister," which was so called because it was a The navies of the contending powers can filled with bullets which were ex- liave not yet got into the game to any pected to scatter when the missile extent. When they do it is certain that struck. money will be burned at a phenomenal rate. The newest battleships and bat tle cruisers are mostly armed with 12 inch or 14-inch guns. A 12-inch rifle discharges a projettile weighing over Shrapnel, indeed, may be regarded as a scientifically contrived shrapnel. It is a hollow steel cylindro-conical pro- ing charge of black powder. This sort of powder is used (in preference to smokeless) because it must produce, on exploding, a puff of visible smoke to enable the gunner to see exactly where his projectiles are doing business. The fuse bf the shrapnel, ignited be fore loading, is set for the requisite distance i. e., the distance from the muzzle of gun at which it is desired the projectile shall explode. This dis tance, when the fire is directed at troops, is ordinarily 50 feet in advance of the farget. On buretlng the shrap nel blows off its own head and throws out ahead of it, in the form of a wide cone, the balls it contains. The scat tering balls fly at a rate of 400 feet per second a velocity sufficient to kill or disable a man or horse. This impulse is attributable partly to the Bpeed at which the shrapnel itself has been traveling, but mainly to the re volving motion given to the projectile by the rifling of the gun from which it was fired. The Idea of the shrapnel,, in a word, is to distribute locally a cloud of bul- tl S 1 v mi .3E9.g-;; "iMJj-'Ty-iTWTri.-iirtttwi'il it;."!" -.,si advancing troops may be considerable, namely, that they cannot possibly keep on fighting for any great length of time. The cost of powder and shot, not It is as if death were to take a broom and sweep out scores of lives in an in stant. Kach shrapnel shell of a given cal iber contains exactly so many balls, in order that the weight of the pro jectile may be unvarying. Thus a six inch shrapnel (the largest used in the United States Army) holds 1200 bullets. The howitzer that fires it has a range of five miles. Suppose, however, that the firing .is directed not against the troops of the enemy, but against a shielded battery or earthworks. In such a case shrapnel woubd be ineffective. Accordingly, shells containing a high explosive are used instead. The load of such high explosive the bursting charge, that is to say must not be too large, lest the shell itself be reduced to powder. Fur thermore, a projectile of the kind has no fuse; it goes off "on impact." But an important point of its efficiency Is that it does not explode instantly on striking the target. A fraction of a second elapses, while it has time to bury itself in an earthwork or fort wall, and then it Dursts. to mention incidentals, must of neces sity bring peace before long. War's Cost in Human Life Balkan Surgeon Reports Losses During 11 MoiitW Conflict. 01 F particular interest at this time art the records of killed and wounded in the recent European wars "little squabbles in the Balkans' they are sometimes described. Professor Octave Laurent has summed up these losses of human life in the account of his 11 months' experience as a surgeon with the Bulgarian troops, which has just been published in Paris. He writes for his surgical colleagues, not to pro duce a sensation. Bulgaria, with 4,300.000 inhabitants, put 500,000 soldiers in the field. Of these 53,000 were wounded and 30,000 killed in the first war, and 16.000 killed and 62,000 wounded in the second. Al- In former days an earthwork, if well together 150,000 killed and wounded constructed, had the advantage, from the viewpoint of the defenders, of be ing almost artillery-proof. Cannon balls and bombs might penetrate it for A few feet, but would do no further damage. It is different with these mod ern shells loaded with high explosives. one-third of the effective force of the army and 3 per cent of the population. There was one death out of every four injured, a very high flsura. In the last Balkan war 150,000 men on both sides were killed or wounded on the field in a single month. Eighty end. Its middle part is filled with lead is merely half a ton, propelled by 160 pounds of balls, much like old-fashioned musket smokeless" powder and each shot costs 500. The charge of powder for a 14 incb gun is 330 pounds, the shell weighs 1660 pounds and the cost of one shot is $700. Our own dreadnought Pennsylvania, one of the latest built of American battleships, carries 12 14-inch guns. Each of these formidable weapons can be fired at the rate of two shots per minute. At $700 a shot this signifies a maximum expenditure of $16,800 a minute. To return to fighting on land. The French in the present conflict find themselves at a certain disadvantage by reason of tneir lack of howitxers. Being doubtful of their military value, quite mistakenly, they did not begin to make guns of this type until about a year ago. and in consequence they possess very few. A howitzer is a short gun designed chiefly for the pur pose of throwing projectiles with a scatters destruction over a wide area area is much greater in the line of the Burying themselves deep before burst- thousand of these fell on the banks of jectile, carrying a fuse at the front lets. The cylinder containing the balls perhaps 300 feet by 10. Larger shrap- trajectory than sidewise, the number ing, they literally demolish an earth- the Bregnalitza in the six days from nel extend the area of destruction in of men killed by the explosion of Ti work as by an action volcanic. June 30 to July 5, 1913. inch projectile of this type bursts it proportion to their size. Inasmuch as this single shell in the midst of a column of It goes without saying that for such Professor Laurent quotes an authori- : " purposes guns of very large caliber tatlve prophecy to the effect that a statesman. The English diplomat ac- are preferably used. Such guns were zero added to these figures would give cldentally, it is presumed, brushed employed by the Germans in. their at- the losses in a European war which against the Spaniard and upset the tack on the forts at Liege and Namur. would line up two armies of the great glass he was carrying. This ridicu- and they proved astonishingly effec- powers. There would be not less than lous incident inflamed the jealousies of tlve much more so. indeed, than any- 1.500.000 wounded and killed in TRIVIAL INCIDENTS CAUSE OF BIG WARS PINIONS may differ as to whether From this marriage centuries of blood- H a the dispute which led to the pres- shed may be said to have followed. where Emperor William then was. to in the gazettes. Alr- him mt n annvftv-A Ha nmhitlnn ent conflagration in jiurope were in an iron case in tne lower or tne v. . i ucuiuiu lvf ucumc uio sufficient to justify the loss of blood cathedral in Modena, Italy, a bucket of Spain.. The King refused to give a and treasure which, it is feared, will which 900 years ago was the cause of a definite answer, but Prince Anthony of be expended, but it is certain that terrible war may be seen today. Sol- Hohenzollern withdrew his son's candi- many great wars in history have re- diers of Modena, in a mischievous dacy. suited from much more trivial causes, mood, stole the bucket from a public A report of the conference was sub- The dogs of war have been let loose well in Bologna and refused to return mitted by telegram to Count Bismarck, and continents deluged with blood fre- it. The states were rivals and were with authorization to publish it. Bis- ouentlv as the result of amazingly in- jealous of each other, and fights be- marck altered the text, and . in the significant incidents. tween soldiers of the two followed. A man may start an incipient riot in This spark kindled a fire of war which devastated a large part or .Europe and led to the imprisonment for life of the King of Sardinia, son of the German the nations and turned the balance in body had expected. Some of the shells month, once the forces were fully in fired from them weighed 750 pounds The Seven gears' War was largely apiece, and one of these projectiles, due, acci ding to his own confession, to finding its way into a powder magazine the vanity of Frederick the Great in at xamur. blew up a whole fort. As wanting to see his name figure largely h a-oertalned ih forts at . v - - ' the field. The figures may be an ex aggeration, but they come approved by a professional expert who has .just had the latest possible experience. Maubeuge proved equally untenable The Sepoys believed that cartridges aKalnst assault by these tremendous " . su uul iu l ii - in were Krcaotu wua his own home by appearing unan nounced with a clean shave after hav ins: worn a luxuriant hirsute adorn ment for years, but ordinarily the emperor. trouble does not go beyond his own door. Louis VII of France was less changed form gave it to the news papers and throu-h them to France. As Bismarck wrote it the report was unfavorable to France, and the inter national war with all its horrors fol lowed. Tears later Bismarck con- Lord Palmerston once said that only Jessed the forgery. three men had ever known the exact The war of the Spanish succession. high trajectory (as a baseball might fortunate. A visit to the royal barber nature of the troubles in Schleswig- in which the great Duke of Marl be thrown into the air) in such a way plunged two nations France and Eng- Holstein which led to two great wars. borough played a brilliant part, was that tney may iau upon tne enemy, into land into intermittent warfare which Two or them had died before the wars saia to De tne outcome or a glass oi lasted 300 years. broke out. and he, the third of the water at a ball at the Tuileries in According to the. story, the arch- trinity, had completely forgotten what Paris. One of the court ladies had ex bishop of Rouen persuaded the King to it was all about. pressed a wish for a drink of water in remove his beard, in common with his The manipulation by Count Bismarck, the hearing of the Britlsji and Spanish subjects. The act led to so much fric- then Prussia's Foreign Minister, of a Ambassadors, who hastened to get it tion with the Queen that at last Louis telegram set Prussia and France flying for her. Returning each with a turn- divorced her, to become a few months at each other's throats in .1870 of howitzers has enabled the German later the wife of Henry II of England. French Ambassador went .to the fat of animals unclean alike to Hindu and Mohammedan, and the In dian mutiny was precipitated. The Turko-Russian war was said to have been started by the hammer with which a Herzegovinan blacksmith killed a tax collector who had insulted his daughter. The stealing of a Castile lady's lace petticoat by a Moor led to many years of fierce warfare between the Span iards and the Moors. The emptying'of weapons. The most important military lesson Dredgre Saves Sunken Bur. Klines Grove, Pa., Cor. Philadelphia Bulletin. When Anson Rabuck, 14 years old. taught by the present war in Europe fen int0 the Susquehanna River he is that no fort can ' be built strong enough to resist attack by modern ar tillery. In the long-continued race be tween fort and gun the latter has defi nitely won. The likelihood seems to be that in future the value, of perma- did not reappear, and men and boys grappled and dived for the body. Three hundred feet down stream a coal dredge was working, and in a few minutes the digging machine threw the little fellow up on the screen, ap- nent fortifications will be discounted, parently dead. While untenable, against a well- His frantic mother, who lives close to equipped foe. they may serve merely the stream, urged that they try to save his trenches or his fortifications. Thus the shrapnel it discharges may be so aimed as to pass over a hill and strike beyond. In the hilly country which has been the scene of fighting in France dur ing the last few days the possession a bucket of a Florentine citizen on the traps as nappenea to tne head of a Milanese gave rise to an in- der Marshal Bazalne at Metz, and to ter-provincial war in Italy. some thousands of French troops re- Borrowing a tobacco pipe and failing cently at Maubeuge. feiUrn iX kindled a ciY;u w wnicn however the rules of war may lasted for years among the rival races , " . . , ... -,,.,, . . in Pamirs and Afghanistan. A dispute- change, the business of f!ghting is be as .h. P.i.,i,.. ,i ,,., coming progressively more expensive The bier they found the fair bird had and ,.jrerB aB raoA started 60 vea.ru of a fact which, in so far as it relates to rarest cases of resuscitation they had, Ema. flown and was dancing with a French fighting between Milan, and Pisa. the present conflict, has one advantage, ever heard oC -4- ' - - - the boy, and a half-dozen men took turns, under her directions, at using "first aid to the injured" methods. After a half-hour's hard work the boy showed signs of life, and afterward was able to ea't his supper. Doctors said that it was one of the