n
publicity office is able to build up a continuous series of enemy
attacks which "break down," and somehow never, never "penetrate our
invincible line." Actually an advance of this nature is extremely slow,
but it is sure, and it is made at the expense of tons upon tons of
ammunition rather than at the expense of lives, for ammunition can be
made faster than soldiers.

Even the old battering ram of feudal times with which the ancestors of
Kaiser William used to knock down the castles of the baron robbers has
been approximated by his warring tribes. With the retreat of the German
troops from Flanders the Allied forces found crude battering rams such
as have been shown in the stirring "movies" when the ancient warriors
stormed the gates of the city.

One of such devices was in the form of an upright frame made of heavy
timbers. An immense log was suspended from the cross-piece by a heavy
chain. An iron band circled one end of the log which was used for
battering purposes and at the opposite end were handles, used by the
operators in their nefarious work. The ram was used to batter in the
doors of houses which had been locked or barricaded against the German
soldiers. In their most destructive moods, it is charged that they used
these devices to destroy the standing walls of houses and cottages after
they had been gutted by fire. The Germans would not permit even so much
as a wall to stand which might be used by the poor peasant in
rehabilitating himself and building a new home.

NEW METHOD OF WARFARE.

The new method of warfare, with men working in trenches and dugouts and
millions of shells breaking over head, while missiles rain all about,
necessitated the development of some device to protect the heads of the
fighters. Therefore the steel helmet.

It has been shown that, due to trench warfare, about seventy-five per
cent of the wounded on the western front had been hit with shrapnel or
pieces of shell traveling at a low velocity and therefore had torn
wounds and in many cases smashed bones. About three per cent of the
wounds were in the head and about fifteen per cent in the face or neck.
This led to the adoption by the French of a steel helmet called after
its inventor, Adrian. The helmets were first used in May, 1915. That
their use is justified is shown by statistics. Among fifty-five cases of
head wounds, forty-two happened to soldiers without helmets.

Twenty-three of these had fractured skulls, while th