opes of their sponsors.

Since I came back out of the war zone I have met persons who questioned
the existence of a 42-centimeter gun, they holding it to be a nightmare
created out of the German imagination with intent to break the
confidence of the enemies of Germany. I did not see a 42-centimeter gun
with my own eyes, and personally I doubt whether the Germans had as many
of them as they claimed to have; but I talked with one entirely reliable
witness, an American consular officer, who saw a 42-centimeter gun as it
was being transported to the front in the opening week of the war, and
with another American, a diplomat of high rank, who interviewed a man
who saw one of these guns, and who in detailing the conversation to me
said the spectator had been literally stunned by the size and length and
the whole terrific contour of the monster.

Finally, I know from personal experience that these guns have been
employed, and employed with a result that goes past adequate
description; but if I hadn't seen the effect of their fire I wouldn't
have believed it were true. I wouldn't have believed anything evolved
out of the brains of men and put together by the fingers of men could
operate with such devilish accuracy to compass such utter destruction.
I would have said it was some planetic force, some convulsion of natural
forces, and not an agency of human devisement, that turned Fort Loncin
inside out, and transformed it within a space of hours from a supposedly
impregnable stronghold into a hodgepodge of complete and hideous
ruination. And what befell Fort Loncin on the hills behind Liege befell
Fort Des Sarts outside of Maubeuge, as I have reason to know. When the
first of the 42-centimeters emerged from Essen it took a team of thirty
horses to haul it; and with it out of that nest of the Prussian war
eagle came also a force of mechanics and engineers to set it up and aim
it and fire it.

Here, too, is an interesting fact that I have not seen printed anywhere,
though I heard it often enough in Germany: by reason of its bulk the 42-
centimeter must be mounted upon a concrete base before it can be used.
Heretofore the concrete which was available for this purpose required at
least a fortnight of exposure before it was sufficiently firm and
hardened; but when Fraulein Bertha Krupp's engineers escorted the
Fraulein's newest and most impressive steel masterpiece to the war, they
brought along with them the ingredients for a n