RIFLES USED BY NATIONS OF WAR

In the present war Germany uses a Mauser rifle, with a bullet of millimeters caliber, steel and copper coated.  Great Britain’s missile is the Lee-Enfield, caliber 7.7 mm., the coating being cupro-nickel.

The French weapon is the Lebel rifle, of 8 mm. caliber, with bullets coated with nickel.  Russia uses Mossin-Nagant rifles, 7.62 mm., with bullets cupro-nickel coated.  Austria’s chief small arm is the Mannlicher, caliber 8 mm., with a steel sheet over the tip.

Hitting a man beyond 350 yards, the wounds inflicted by all these bullets are clean cut.  They frequently pass through bone tissue without splintering.

When meeting an artery the bullet seems to push it to one side and goes around without cutting the blood channel.

Amputations are very rare compared with wars of more than fifty years ago.  A bullet wound through a joint, such as the knee or the elbow, then necessitated the amputation of the limb.  Now such a wound is easily opened and dressed.

Even Russia, which made a sad sanitary showing in the war with Japan, now has learned her lesson and has efficient surgical arrangements.

All the nations use vaccine to combat typhoid, the scourge which once decimated camps, and killed 1,600 in the Spanish-American war.

GERMAN UHLANS AS SCOUTS

Concerning the German Uhlans, of whom so much has been heard in the European war, Luigi Barzini, a widely known Italian war correspondent, said: 

“The swarms of cavalry which the Germans send out ahead of their advance are to be found everywhere—­on any highway, on any path.  It is their business to see as much as possible.  They show themselves everywhere and they ride until they are fired upon, keeping this up until they have located the enemy.

“Theirs is the task of riding into death.  The entire front of the enemy is established by them, and many of them are killed—­that is a certainty they face.  Now and then, however, one of them manages to escape to bring the information himself, which otherwise is obtained by officers in their rear making observation.

“At every bush, every heap of earth, the Uhlan must say to himself:  ‘Here I will meet an enemy in hiding.’  He knows that he cannot defend himself against a fire that may open on him from all sides.  Everywhere there is danger for the Uhlan—­hidden danger.  “Nevertheless he keeps on riding, calmly and undisturbed, in keeping with German discipline.”

FOUGHT WITHOUT SHOES

The Paris Matin relates that on the arrival of a train bringing wounded Senegalese riflemen nearly all were found smoking furiously from long porcelain pipes taken from the enemy and seemingly indifferent to their wounds.  One gayly told of the daring capture of a machine gun by eighteen of his comrades.  The gun, he said, was brought up by a detachment of German dragoons and the Senegalese bravely charged and captured everything.