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 new kind of concrete; and those who claim to have been present on the occasion declare that within forty-eight hours after they had mixed and molded it, it was ready to bear the weight of the guns and withstand the shock of their recoil.

This having been done, I conceive of the operators as hoisting their guns into position, and posting up a set of rules—­even in time of war it is impossible to imagine the Germans doing anything of importance without a set of rules to go by—­and working out the distance by mathematics, and then turning loose their potential cataclysms upon the stubborn forts which opposed their further progress.  From the viewpoint of the Germans the consequences to the foe must amply have justified the trouble and the cost.  For where a 42-centimeter shell falls it does more than merely alter landscape; almost you might say it alters geography.

In the open field, where he must aim his gun with his own eye and discharge it with his own finger, I take it the Kaiser’s private soldier is no great shakes as a marksman.  The Germans themselves begrudgingly admitted the French excelled them in the use of light artillery.  There was wonderment as well as reluctance in this concession.  To them it seemed well-nigh incredible that any nation should be their superiors in any department pertaining to the practice of war.  They could not bring themselves fully to understand it.  It remained as much a puzzle to them as the unaccountable obstinacy of the English in refusing to be budged out of their position by displays of cold steel, or to be shaken by the volleying, bull-like roar of the German charging cry, which at first the Germans counted upon as being almost as efficacious as the bayonet for instilling a wholesome fear of the German war god into the souls of their foes.

While giving the Frenchmen credit for knowing how to handle and serve small field-pieces, the Germans nevertheless insisted that their infantry fire or their skirmish fire was as deadly as that of the Allies, or even deadlier.  This I was not prepared to believe.  I do not think the German is a good rifle shot by instinct, as the American often is, and in a lesser degree, perhaps, the Englishman is, too.  But where he can work the range out on paper, where he has to do with mechanics instead of a shifting mark, where he can apply to the details of gun firing the exact principles of arithmetic,