ating the heavy guns when they got fast in the mud. Now every gun
has these belts which can be put on or detached in a few minutes.

Paradoxically, this is the day of the big gun's greatest effectiveness,
and the day of its greatest limitations. The war has taught us more in
two years about gunnery and the effect of various types of ordnance
under varying conditions than could have been learned in twenty years of
theoretical research--for actual experience proves where theoretical
research merely gives ground on which to base an opinion.

NATIONAL RESOURCES TO DISLODGE A MAN.

One of the things that we have learned is that when man takes unto
himself the humble pick and shovel and proceeds to dig a hole for
himself in the ground, we can get him out of that hole only by drawing
on the combined resources of a nation, by constructing one of the most
complex and expensive instruments in the world, and with it hurling at
man dug-in a projectile weighing a good part of a ton.

The blunder, perhaps unavoidable, which stands out with equal emphasis
among the preliminary preparations of all the nations engaged in the
struggle was the underestimation of the artillery power required for the
conduct of a successful military campaign under modern conditions of
warfare. It was an underestimation so great that in the light of
developments it will some day prove ridiculous.

At the opening of the war two opposed theories of artillery
effectiveness were held by the combatants. The French swore by the
medium calibre, rapid-fire, low-trajectory field piece. The Teutons had
devoted their best efforts to the development of guns so big that their
opponents were tempted, before they learned better, to regard them as
too unwieldy for effective field service. Both were right, the French in
the full sense and intention of the term, the Teutons by pure accident.

It should be explained here that the word Teuton is used advisedly, for
in reality it is to the Austrians before the Germans that the
development of the 11-inch and bigger field gun, with its special
carriage and caterpillar-tread wheels owes its existence. It was
Austrian guns and Austrian gunners that first made the heavy artillery
of the Teuton armies famous.

The French field piece performed all that was expected of it, but it was
handicapped by unforeseen conditions of warfare. The heavy Teuton guns
performed their mission in the very introductory stages of the war, then
fa