WASTE OF WAR.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXX, Issue 81, 8 July 1916, Page 6

WASTE OF WAR.

SOME STARTLING FIGURES. Interesting notes are published in the Dutch Navy League journal Mar* inebad. V It is announced in Vienna that Kaiser B'rarizrJdsef's army alone fired during seventeen months of the .war lS',dOO;0'00,000 infantry cartridges "and 12,000;000 shells. Those cartridges are 500 times the number used by the Germans in the Franco-German War of 1870-1871. The shells are 14 times the number used by Germany in that great war. England since the outbreak of the war has put on the stocks and delivered warships of a greater tonnage than the entire American navy. This means (as the New York World is reminding its readers )that within a year the British Fleet will be about

300 per cent, larger than the American Navy—unless part of it should bo destroyed by Germany. Up to Ist March, 1916, 918 mines had been washed ashore on the Netherlands coast. Mr H. Warner Allen, special correspondent of the British Press with the French armies, gives comparative statistics of France's output of munitions.

* Taking the figure 1 as representing the normal output on Ist August, 1914, the production of unloaded shells for the French 75's rose to 14 by the middle of May, 1915, then to 29 .by the end of December, 1915, and to .'3OJ by Ist February, this yeai I \ The output of all kinds of larger shells increased 4 to 8$ by the middle of May, 1915; to 35 by the end of last December; and to over 44 by Ist Feb ruary.

; Of heavy guns the French are now turning out 33 times as many as at the beginning of the war. As to field guns, the number of 75's is now 23 times as great as when the German rush on Paris commenced nearly 20 months ago. Powder production is increased in "a like ratio.