CHIEF FACTOR IN WAR.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LVIII, Issue 288, 14 May 1915, Page 7

CHIEF FACTOR IN WAR.

SITPUES OF AMMUNITION. WHAT THE BIG GUNS CONSUME. The chief factor in deciding this war (Mr. Iliiaire Beuoc writes) will be the superiority on one side or the other of heavy artillery. The war has reached a phase in which that point is quite clear, and it is a point which should be familiar henceforward to the public opinion of the Allies, for the provision of ammunition and of pieces in suflicicut rapidity will very largely depend upon that opinion. There arc three tilings that give one party superiority in its heavy artillery over another—the handling of the pieces the number of pieces (including the power of rclining Worm riflings ahd replacing lost pieces), and. third, the supply of ammunition. The first of those .is, of course,, essential. The Allies have it without a doubt. The handling of guns is a matter of talent and natural temperament as much as any other, art, and the Allies in the West'are now clearly proved the superiors of the enemv in that art.

The refitting of guns and the production of now guns would be an equally essential consideration were there not this curious relationship. between guns and ammunition nowadays, that you can produce a gun more easily and more quickly than you can produce the ammunition it will need a few weeks. It is therefore the third point which is really the crux. If we have not sufficient ammunition for the job nil our superiority is handicapped, and much ol it is thrown away. What }3 the cause for this demand for ammunition, which is the one great call of the Army at this moment? It is tile nature of the; modern weapon, ajid of the fighting that has developed from it. I am not speaking of the quick-firing field-gun, but of the heavy gun, which lias in this new trench-fighting everywhere become the decisive weapon.

It is the heavy gun which renders a trench untenable; it vs the heavy gun, the fire of which all the mass of aircraft works to correct and make precise. It is the heavy gun which, by a greater accuracy, but still more by a greater voluuin' of delivery, silences its equal upon the enemy's side, and makes os able to attack his trenches, while it pervents him from attacking ours. Men read the other day in the English papers of a successful advance made by the French near Perthes, in Champagne. Do you know what that particular movement of less than a day and a half cost in ammunition for the heavy pieces? It cost 80,000 rounds; and it was this tornado of fire that made the brilliant local success possible. I saw but a few weeks ago a vast shed in the north where every man and machine was turning out such shell, and yet the contract then was for but 3000.

It is so in every part of the line. Upon the crushing effect of unlimited heavy gun-fire the cowing of the opposed lines will depend; upon its uninterluptcd acthity will the maintenance of our superiority depend; upon a special concentration of such lire without stint and without thought for reserves will the final effort depend when the time comes. And for all this rapid, increased continual production of munitions is the absolute prime necessity. In the past some one particular operation, a siege of some one place--a few miles of front—demanded at some one time an expenditure of this sort, not, indeed, on the modern scale, but still on a heavy scale. To-day every mile of

fronts moiv than a thousand miles demand* it; and the rotouroe.s of ull the ('iiTintvicH, even th»e with lumtril i::ar':<*t<.]ien to thru:, an- strained t<i l!;e utmost to produc tin* food tlio niniir-iiM' requires. if this i;io];>i"r i* to serve us, and nnt to <-/-nv «r.ir enemies, v.f provide him.