VERY EXPENSIVE NOISE.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXII, Issue 58, 4 March 1912, Page 8

VERY EXPENSIVE NOISE.

Calculations made 'in connection with some battles have shown that quite an extraordinary weight of metal may ho fired for every casualty that occurs. If a correspindent- of “The Times” is to ho beueved the Italians seem to he establishing a record in this respect in Tripoli, this correspondent sends a vivid account of the bombardments by the Italian ships of the villages that die along the coast. “From Tripoli to the Tunisian frontier there is certainly not a mud hut visible from the sea, nor a solitary palm tree in the dunes that has not had its little" bombardment! You cannot stroll along the beach when a warship is in the offing without being saluted by a hail of shrapnel as soon as yon have been discovered. I assure you that 1 am in ho way exaggerating, and that we are assisting at a> .veritable orgy ot shell and ball, and a perpetual naval ‘tantasia’ of gun-fire.” The damage done, however, is ridiculously out of proportion to the power of the missiles. For distance, at Zuara, an oasis less than a mils long, there have been eight bombardments, and 800 shells have fallen among or near its stone houses, but only a- few bouses have boon damaged, and most of those not seriously. That of the local commander of infantry was s. special mark, but although thirty shells reached it, it still stands. Behind it is an officer’s house that was pierced by many shells, hut the furniture is still intact, and one may sleep in a bed close to whore one of the projectiles burst. The ships located the barracks, and sent no fewer than 400 shells at them, but the only results were to chip a corner off one building, and slightly damage two rooms in the officers’ quarters. Most of the shells fell wide, and buried themselves in the sand without bursting. The casualties had -been very few when the correspondent wrote. .Five fugitives were killed at Zuara in the early stages, but since then the only casualty had been a boy, who was hit when playing in the open. “Now, as soon as the smoke of a ship is seen on the horizon by the look-outs on the dunes, the bugle sounds and the tom-tom is beaten. In a few minutes the town is deserted, and shops shut, and everybody' takes his gun and falls into his place to wait. And if there is ia bombard-* ment, it is without any emotion now that we hear the long and strident whistle of the shells and the violent bursting of,the shrapnel. We are accustomed to them all.” This enormous.waste of ammunition must be costing Italy a pretty penny.