New Britain Herald Newspaper, August 21, 1915, Page 9

®Photos by American Press Assoclation. l—General von Buelow, a German commander in the east. 2—Grand Duke Nicholas Nicholaievitch, com- mander in chief of the Russian armies. —View of Warsaw from Praga. 4.—General von Hindenburg, ancther German commander in ?h. east. 5.—Type of newest Austrian siege gun which did such damage in the Teuton advance. 6.—Archduke Frederick, commander chief of the Austrian armies. 7.—General von Mackensen, German leader, fighting near Warsaw. N Aug. 25, 1914, the Austrian troops marched from Kras- nik, Poland, toward Radom, and on the following day the Russians reached a point twenty-six miles from Danzig, with the main Rus- sian army 140 miles from Berlin. Thus, just a year ago, the campalgn which has been termed the greatest in the history of the world began. Back and forth the two great armies swayed, with advantage first on one side and then on the other. The fighting was horrible, the loss of life on both sides appalling, and for ten months neither side could gain a decisive advantage. True, the Russian hosts advanced, tak- ing Przemysl, in Austrian territory, after a long siege, only to be driven back first to Lemberg, then to War- saw, and then still farther in their own territory. The Teuton armies would not be stopped. Germany and Austria put every force on earth into their terrific attacks, and the czar's men, facing a shortage of ammunition, fell back inch by inch until now the Austro-German forces have penetrated far into Rus- sian Poland. ’ Greatest Campaign In History. The occupation of Warsaw by the Ger- man army ends the greatest campaign of the war—of all wars, of all history. %R 1,000 miles, extending from the Baltic to the frontier of Roumania. Accord- ing to the most authoritative figures, there have been between 6,000,000 and 7,000,000 men engaged in almost daily conflicts. The attacks upon the sides of the inclosing lines—600 miles—of ‘Warsaw have been the most furious in modern warfare and only equaled by the vain counterattacks which have been more or less successfully launch- ed by the Russians. Hope was first entertained in mili- tary quarters in London and Paris that the Russians had some tremendous coup in reserve, that they would stand a siege in their principal fortresses along the Warsaw salient, and then, with a free army still in the field, would at- tempt to turn the Teutonic flanks, ei- ther in the north between Libau and Riga or in the south on the Bukowin- ian-Roumanian frontier or suddenly is- sue from the lines northeast and southeast of Warsaw and attempt to It has been fought along a front of envelop the armies in the west. MONTHS OF WAR SEie> grad that in order to save the Russian armies a retreat—the greatest in his- tory, even greater than the retreat of the Russians through Galicia from | April 28 to May 25—must be made and | the fortresses of the Warsaw salient | abandoned. It was the same old story of the Galician retreat—lack of am- | munition. The armies would retire to prepared and selected ground, forming a similar angle, 130 miles t of the Warsaw salient, and there await on the defensive the munitions necessary for a new and formidable offensive. German Plan to Reach Railways. Notwithstanding the feints in the north, in the direction of Riga, the aim of the German general staff has been obvious since the beginning of June. It was to reach the railways on which the Russian armies of the salient de- pended for their supplies and by which they might make their retreat. To do this seven huge armies have But then came advices from Petro- army operating against the double track line which runs from Warsaw to Petrograd, 1,000 miles in the northeast, via Bialystok and Grodno; the army operating in the Suwalkl district, threatening the same line farther west; the army fightir a support of the latter on the Nare the army direct- ly aimed at V w, north of the V | tula; the army directly aimed at War- w, south of the Vistula: ten o | twelve Austrian army corps, attempt ing to reach the single and double| track railway from Ivangorod to Brest| Litovsk and Moscow, and the line from | Warsaw to Kiev via Lublin and Chelm, which is for the most part a single track, and, finally, the army of Von Linsingen, made up of Austria’s “new” army of 700,000 or 800,000 men, operating on the Lipa, east of Lem- berg. For months, in spite of the terrible attacks made upon the Warsaw-Bialy- stok section in the north and the Lub- | operations have been under the su-| | preme command of Field Marshal von Russians managed to keep the outer while between them the lines free, double track line from Warsaw via Siedlice to central Russia remained open until the last. North of the Vistula the combined Hindenburg, while the Austro-German —principally Austrian—armies of the south or right have been under the su- | preme direction of Field Marshal von | Mackensen. At the very beginning of the cam- paign the hardest fighting developed between the middle Vistula and the Bug, where the Russlans held their ground for nearly two imonths, suffer- ing no small loss. Another battle front early developed was north of the lower Vistula, from Wysczogrod to around Ossowetz. Russian Plan That Failed. This upshot of the two months’ cam- paign of the Teutonic armies has been been employed—the German northern lin-Chelm section in the south, the ammunition, oped from January to the middle of April for penetrating and grasping the plains of Hungary in the form of a gi- gantic palr of shears, one knife of which was to cut southward from the Carpathians and the other northwest- ward from Bukowina and Transylvania. In the last week in April Russia was in possession of the crests of the Car- pathians, and her left wing had already begun to move westward through Bukowina, when the vast German- Austrian masses (including 700,000 or 800,000 Austrian reserves, made up of exceptionally intelligent men between the ages of thirty-five and forty, who had for months been carefully trained in order to replace the Fourteenth and Third army corps on the Italian fron- tier), which had been mobilized in Si- lesia, southeast Prussia and In Galicia west of Cracow, began their drive eastward, the Russian lines retreating the logical military sequel to the defeat from their positions on the Carpathi- of the plans, due, it is sald, to lack of which Russia had devel- IN THE EASTERN THEA ans in order to prevent em When the retreating Rus a northeasterly direction Galician frontier, forty miles: Zamosc, in Poland, the campi er for the possession of 'Wai The entire Russian front th sented a huge angle, the which, in irregular lines, ex the Baltic, just east of Plock, forty miles west and north of Warsaw, and the southeasterly direction thro ner of Bukowina to the fi Roumania—in all a distance | 1,000 miles. Although some attempt was turn the northern line on its | and push the southern line ther away from the Galician the preponderance of the armies has been employed vortex at Plock—that is to line about 300 miles long northeast of Warsaw and about the same length ex: east from their point of Plock. The Vital Railway Systems. Between the sides of this of railway radiate from northeast, east and southeast. lar system fis found at the Brest Litovsk, on the Bug miles due east of Warsaw, wi ther east still on the line to a vast network of strategic has been constructed since the gan connecting the towns whose products have the armies at the front. At ovsk there may be found, J eastward and embracing e an angle similar to that last week In July con and similarly punctuated sides by fortified towns and heights, some of which date June. L ,AERIAL TORPEDO DEVISED BY FISKE; FIRST MEETING OF NAVAL BOARD SOON Photos by American Press Association. Air craft from which it is proposed to fire torpedo; a Whitehead torpedo, similar in appearance to the new one, and (below) Admiral Fiske. HE first great gathering in the United States to consider the national defense question will be held in Washington from Oct. 4 to 7. It will take place imme- diately following the Grand Army of the Republic encampment there and will be under the auspices of the Na- ¥ tional Defense league. & It is planned that the gathering shall ! be one of representative citizens from every state of the Union, who will con- sider what measures must be taken by . congress to increase the fighting arms of the country. The conference will be presided over by Representative Kahn of California, {chairman, and Senator Robert F. |of the National Defense lcague. | An invention which was perfected by |Rear Admiral Fiske almost twenty |years ago, when he was a lieutenant |commander in the navy, is being con- sidered by naval designers as a po: ble basis for the construction of aerial torpedo boats which might inflict tre- mendous damage on battleships. The Fiske invention provides for the construction of a flying vessel, which would carry a. torpedo weighing one ton. One of the principal values of {such a flying machine, in the opinion of !naval experts, would be its ability to lattack landlocked fleets. | Swooping down at a distance of five sea miles from the object of attack, the air craft would drop its deadly pas- roussard of Louisiana, vice chairman | senger into the water just as it would have been launched from a destroyer. The impact sets the torpedo’s machin- ery in motion, and it is off at a speed of more than forty knots an hour to- ward the enemy ship. The range of the newest navy tor- pedoes is 10,000 yards, and even the | older types will be effective at 7,000 vards. Carried on a huge aeroplane the 2,000 pound weapon would be taken over harbor defenses at an altitude safe from gunfire. Once over the bay, the machine would guide to within ten or twenty feet of the water, the torpedo rudders would be set, and it would be dropped, to do its work while the aero- plane rose and sped away. Aeroplanes to carry a ton of dead weight have been perfected by several countries. Russia is said to have sev- eral that will carry twenty ‘men, and the new British air craft probably will have similar capacity. “ It is said to be possible that a type of radio controlled torpedo might be employed, one aeroplane carrying a torpedo and another the wireless ma- chinery to control the missile’s flight through the water. It is pointed out that Admiral Fiske obtained patents on such a method of control in 1900, when he was a lieutenant commander in the navy. They are said to be so broad and farreaching as to underlie all subsequent developments of radio controlled devices. “My invention,” says the application filed by Lieutenant Commander Fiske, s especially applicable to automobile torpedoes and makes it possible to con- trol the movements of a torpedo with great certainty from a shore, from the deck of a ship or a lake.” Since the aerial torpedo plan was ad- vanced reports have come that German engineers were at work on a similar scheme. It is planned to drop from aeroplanes a torpedo that can he guld- ed by radio impulses during its fall and send it with absolute certainty to its mark. Further tests of the Isham high ex- [plosive tuse for use in navy shells will |be made soon by the naval board ap- |pointed eight months ago to determine |the value of this device submitted by Willard S. Isham. The fuse was a sub- | ject of controversy during the last con- |gress, and the special board, headed by |Rear Admiral Fiske, was appointed to |conduct the tests. Secretary Daniels !apprnved Admiral Fiske's recommenda- |tion that several fuses be made with improvements suggested by the board since previous experiments showed no very satisfagtory result. CANADIAN BORDER AN ARMED CZ LL the eastern section of Niagara peninsula is an armed camp. The frontier along the Niagara river from Fort Erie, opposite Buffalo, to Niagara on the Lake, on Lake Ontario, is as thoroughly patrolled and guarded as though it were touch- ing the German lines in Flanders. Squads of cavalry dash along the country roads; soldiers on motorcycles speed from one point to another; the flash of the heliograph is seen from Queenstown heights, under the shadow of Brock’s monument, and occasionally large bodies of soldiers, preceded by armor clad automobiles, shift from place to place along the river. The officers will not say whether or not they are apprehensive of a raid by German sympathizers or agents in the United States, and the presumption is that the military activity there is merely preparation for service abroad. At headquarters, where permission was sought to take photographs in the camp, the officer in charge first re- quested the plate on which a picture had been taken on the outskirts of the camp. It was handed over with the assurance that it was the only view that had been taken. “We know that,” said the officer. Later in the day, when more friendly relations had been established, the same officer showed a copy of a mes- sage that had preceded the corre- spondent’s automobile by more than half an hour into headquarters. It came from the heliograph station on Queenstown heights, and in it the au- tomobile and its occupants were de- scribed faithfully. It told that the ma- chine carried a photographic outfit and gave the exact number of plates in the holders. “Your meeting with the cavalry along the road was not merely accidental,” the officer explained. “The first de- tachment, you will remember, raced on ahead of you until it joined another patrol at a crossroad. Later, as your machine was passing through that wooded section of the road, you were suddenly surrounded”—all of which was true. “The first glimpse you got of the horsemen was a mimijc retreat before your machine. Re-enforced, the caval- rymen laid a successful ambuscade for you. And all along this journey of six £ Photos by American Press Association. camp was granted when a promise was given to submit them to the com- manding officer for his approval The number of men in the camp now is about 4,500. Recruiting is still going on, and it is believed that the number will be kept near the 5,000 mark con- miles your movements were known.” Permission to take pictures in the tinuously until Nov. 1, when the train- ing camp closes, the drafts of trained Three views of Canadian troops in training. men sent away to France placed by the new recruits. The men are of splendid ph earnest in their work and all measure up to the standard of brothers who fought well at and Langemarck. A large per of the men willing to serve are n by the recruiting officers, it 4§ 80