New Britain Herald Newspaper, July 19, 1915, Page 10

in the field. 2.~German headquarters scene, telephoning ,/3~—~German field telephomists. 4.—~Telephone squad in dl-n telephone squad. 6.—A German artillery outlook m .of fire to battery, 18 one ally 'that serves armies. It is the tele- . It not only helps them flerce hours of battle, ‘the weary hours of the in the trenches and on ends served by this in- wi says the Telephone of the multitude of 'picturesque but more omplishments of ‘'peace. t of peaceful counterparts d for each warlike adapta- ct Thus we have the ‘dource of amusement as the instrument of by American Press Association. Qrm-n military aviator l'eulvlng instructions before flbghk g at base in France. Lower—British hydroderoplane Invmg warship, ED afllclent air Claude Grahame-White, British aviator in chief, a ‘commander should know ex- day to day not only what int is doing at the moment, s reserve troops are being at what, points his battle strengthened or thinnéd. of surprise, once so vital b almost eliminated. It for one commander to ove in mind. The new jemy’s superscout, who flu lines, finds it all v gréat s fight there & possibility—as there was. “time of Napoleon—for a - and brillfant master _stroke. | such vast bodies of men dre em- very movement is necessarily ‘forces as are ‘now uged moved, cannot be flung im- Bly at & critical position, without 'scouts discovering the in-' ing it and robbing it of st—surprise. The result 18 mgz'!me pQint cted couts, 7.-—a.rman signal corps, with appa- heroism and faithful service through great crises or in the face of peril; as a means of insuring safety and protec- tion, and, as in the terrile blunder at Neuve Chapelle, the lack of telephone service as the cause of catastrophe. en a shot of the enemy happened to cut the wires the British artillery kept firing after the British troops had ad- yanced into the line of fire because the message to Etop the ‘cannonade had failed to reach the gunners. More grateful is it' to read of the phone as an entertainer on the stricken fleld. A recentidispatch told the follow- ing story of a British officer in Flan- “The officer spends lonely hours in the windmill in charge of the telephone exchange from which the batteries are worked.. The men in the trencheés and the gun pits pity his loneliness and in- vent a scheme to cheer him up, so,after dark, when the cannonade slackens, he puts the receiver to his ears and listehs ‘to'a Tyrolese ballad sung by an orderly and to the admirable imitation of* a barking dog performed by a sapper and to a Parisian chanson delightfully ren- dered by the aviator.” Some of the incidents told in the dls- ders: patches show that the *hello girl Top, -hipx-ad and force (s held, by .force. i. As to the offensive 'element: of air craft this famous ‘expert declares that what has been surprising is the amount of damage they have done. “Not that this damage 'has been considerable, for it has not, but it has been far greater than many would have thought possi- ble. ~With no experience worth the namej and with no.missiles or releasing gear that were anything but experi- mental, the aviators in this campaign have been able—almost entirely through their own courage ‘and ' skill—te pur- sue a guerrilla form of warfare which merely from its harassing and discon- certing aspects has- had' a marked ef- fect upont the enemy attacked.” He confidently believes that the future of aeroplanes in war will be a nightmare 80 terrible humanity will revolt. It is, however, in Its scouting work /and its assistance to artillery gunners that Claude Grahame-White sees the aeroplane as a factor that has to be reckoned with. And thisis the service'in which the United States, where the fly- ing machine was invented, is consider- ed most {nadequately. nlllppad. ~ “Even with all the money. Wl this gation right—Bpritish aeroplane on tranlpcrt has avallable,” says John Hays Ham- mond, Jr., “time is the thing whieh counts in the first phases of modern war, In. proportion to what would have to, be done, time is so short that all the dollars on earth could not fn- crease the speed of manufacture to supply the imminent demand.” Mr. Hammond has submitted to the Aero Club of America a detailed plan to provide for coast defense; aeroplanes equipped with wireless and a chainjof radio statiens, which, he says, will make it possible to protect the Atlagn- tic and Pacific coasts and the Mexic¢an border with thirty-three aero zones and the same number of radio stations. “It is my belief,” says Mr. Ham- mond, “that by applying radio systems to aeroplanes and the. establishment of aero scouting districts or areas dlong our seaboard we can provide for our cotntry an inyaluable (unit of defense: 1t must be borne in mind that our cogst line is so extensive and our navy at present of su small size and' coth- paratively slow speed that it is esseh. ‘tial for us' to develop scouting facHli~ ties of extraordinary efficiency. @ “To cover Our coast line it would b- the ‘deaperate hours of war exhibit the same heroism as they have frequently displayed n the greater catastrophes of peace. When. the Russians made an incur- sion into the town of Memel, in East Prussia, recently, and Field Marshal von Hindenburg’ rang up the Memel postoffice. after receiving news of the Russian aggression, he expressed to the girl ‘who answered his call “his aston- ishment and joy” that she and her col- leagues had remained at their posts. Prince Joachim, one of the kaiser's resented the heroine with a sil ¢ / necessary to have forty-four aeroplanes and forty small portable houses, each with an aerial mast about eighty to ninety feet high. The house would be used as a recelving station and an aeroplane hangar, Tg man the. system properly it would require three shifts of ‘aviatprs, of 132 men, and forty teleg- raphers. - By! introducing the wireless' telephone and land phone experts in | this liné could be done away with. The inftial ‘expenditure would not be more than $398,500, ‘It the national guard and naval militia of the coastal states undertook this plan the burden of their contribu- tion toward it would be in direct pro- portion to their coast line, and there- fore to their openness to attack. “With. such a system it would be possible in time of war for Washington to know every hour and a half the ex- act eonditions along our entire coast.” Robert R. McCormick, war corre- lspendent of the Chicago Tribune, re- cently wrote after a visit to the British headquarters in Flanders: “Any civilian who spends a reason- able time with this army will realize not only that our nation is in real dan- ger from lack of military preparedness, but that our regular army itself is in no shape to take the fleld. 1 do not know how many aeroplanes the British army has at present, but I do know that it lost on one stormy night more aeroplanes than our army has ever possesied. ‘Congress must appropriate for the repair and transport equipment of an army flying corps and must buy a number of aeroplanes unless our gener- als are to fight blind. But it could add a valuable volunteer fleet for use in war by providing for the commission- ing of seroplane owners who maintain- ed a certain standard of equipment and skill' * This might lead to a 'healthy growth in American aeronautics. Such scientific and patriotic activity would be better for rich men’s sons than either adding’ to or spending father's fortune: “Unquestionably there would be an oOccasional fatality, but if the Ameri- can people cannot screw up enough fortitude to face sacrifices of this kind it. will - before long come under the domination of a people less decadent. “The British air army has the won- derful record of not one fatality from accident since the war started. And, strangely enough, its proportion of loss from all causes is less than that of ar- tillery, cavalry or infantry. “I daw the very machine that alone engaged twelye Germans and brought two to the ground. 1 was shown the weapon: which had been so successful. I did nbt see—what would have inter- ested ‘'me more—the man who alone steered and shot. “The ‘knights of old were driven from the battlefield by the low born soldier'with the musket. The soldier of today must now yield even the field of romancg to the oily mecHanic.” ver watch and “words of lively recog+ nition.” Our telephone heroines who remain at the switchboard while fire rages in the floor below may not receive com- mendation from king or kaiser or kai- ser’s son, but the recognition they are accorded is not less valued. England for its 'defense against Zep- pelin raids is depending as much on the telephone as on its 'anti-alrcraft guns, Newcastle, whose shipyards were un- doubtedly the objective of a recent Zep- pelin raid, received warning by tele- phone from Blyth that -the Zeppelins were coming. Immediately the lights were flashed out and the Zeppelins evi- dently failed ‘to discern their objec- tive in the darkness, for Newcastle es- caped entirely. The heart of London similarly was saved when the Zeppe- lins reached the northern suburbs and the east end. The headquarters of a commanding officer are like the main office of any vast business enterprise. With every point in the fleld the general is in con- tact, even while the fight is raging. Even as the troops move forward to the attack, telephone wires move with them, and telephone operators, say three or four or more to a battalion, are in constant communication with an ex- change station. That station, again, is in communication with a long circuit by radiating lines, as, for instance, with the bureau of the general and the quar- ters of the principal officers. As the attacking party advances the ground in front of them is swept by the rs continue to make progress they would, it the fire was not accurately adjusted, run into | their own shells, as the British did at Neuve Chapelle, but at this point the telephone intervenes. The commander of the advancing force signals to the artillery to direct thelr fire forward, to- ward any point of the compass and at any distance desired. The artillery obeys by adjusting the elevation of the cannor, and thdugh the man in front may not be aware of the situation of the guns nor the gunners khow where their shells are falling, yet the accuracy | attained is such that it can be adjusted to every fifty, or, at any rate, every, hundred yards, of advence. The telephone at the front is carried in every econceivable way. With miles of wires it is'conveyed on vehicles llke gun carriages. It is carried on horse- back. Where horses dare not venture it is taken by mien’ who have the wires coiled on' a small eylinder slung on & frame resembling an ambulance stretcher. In the trenches every fresh “street” has its telephone service. Today the dispatch rider,; so famous in the an ol of past wars, exists only to supplement the telephone. It is on the wires the generals must depend mot only receive inf byt to give orders. With battle lines extending hundreds, miles and the attack coming unexpect-, edly at any polit it is ofly by the swiftness of the telephdne message that re-enforcements pam bewent to weaken ed poul-um.w'l-vlcwwu-n disaster. A Thrilling stories by the bundred sre told of men on both sides of the great conflict in Furope, who with a wire and. receiver strapped to them have crawi. ed out to dangefous observation polnts: and, lying hidden, haVe sent back the information on which the fate of the day’'s battle has depended. Without the telephone the war, could hardly be cafely ried on on its present fl‘um scale with millions of men under the ultle mate control of a single man. San Marino, Smallest But Oldest 'Re‘p,ul})lic\ AN MARINO, which literally came on to the map when it entered the war on the side of Italy, is so small a state that it really is rarely to be found on any except the largest maps of Europe. Most geography books ignore its ex- istence, yet it is the oldest existing re- public as well as the smallest. For more than 1,000 years it has rest- ed secure in its independence in its place in the sun on the flat top of Monte Titano, 2,650 feet above the sea. Its entire area is but thirty-three square miles, and its population but 11,041 When it promised to aid its friend Italy “to the last man” San Marino mustered its armed forces and counted thirty-nine officers and 950 men. Nominally the republic of San Ma- rino has been at war with Austria ever since 1866. This is due to its small- ness, for the treaty of peace which gave the region of Venetia to Italy, arranged between that country and Prussia and Austria, made no mention of the repub- lic, which considered herself an ally of Italy. Garibaldi, with some Marinese among his forces, was still fighting in the Trentino west of Trent and threat- ened to besiege the city when Victor Emmanuel II. ordered him to return in 1867. A new treaty of friendship with Italy was concluded June 28, 1907, and revised in 1908, but peace was never formally made with Austria. Dominating the Adriatic, San Marino forms a useful point for the mounting of big guns, but the value of her entry into the war on the side of Italy has a still more useful side than that. It is one which has never before belonged to the tiny state in all its long existence, for if San Marino had remained neutral Austria could have used this mountain top as a most valuable resting place for its attacking air craft. On Nov. 12, 1914, San Marino defled the kaiser in a reply to the demand of the German ambassador that the wire- less station at Monte Titano, which is in direct communication with the Eif- fel tower, be abolished, San Marino in its reply rvecalled the ancient tradi- tions of liberty and the dignity of the republic and described the demand of the ambassador as an unjustified and intolerable interference. “The republic of Sam Marino,” it said, “strong in its right, has never permitted interference by other states in its internal affairs.” In January last the German govern- ment protested at San Marino, accus- ing the republic of encouraging espion- age through its wireless station and threatened to send a German commis- sion to inquire into the matter. The republic declined to receive the com- missioners. The little state is tolerably safe on top of its mountain. The capital, San wrlno. climbs the side of the peak. Photos by American Press Assoclation. Embattled peak on which S8an Ma regent. altar of cathedral. whose three summits are ringed with defenses. Strongly fortified by nature, the Marinese could hurl a powerful in- vader into the sea. Once before, in the eighth century, the people of San Marino defied the Germans, or at least the Holy Roman empire, in the person of the mighty Charlemagne, who, according to his secretary, Einkhard, was Below—Annual election of captains-rgent. destined to' Above—Procession of captai Drawing lots st high dle without ever having heard of Marino or its declaration. But that! declaration exists and is sald to be thy oldest document preserved which de. fines the status of the republic, As the Liliputian state is surround ed by 1taly and all the inhabitants Italians, the hy with Ttaly natural, and t| trance of San rino into the war was fully expoctod.