Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights Part 34

Experiments in Europe demonstrated the presence of the germ in rats not only near the infected zones, but also in captured localities some distance from trenches.

For purposes of comparison Dr. Noguchi collected a number of rats in this country and removed their kidneys. His report states that by inoculating the emulsion made of the kidneys of 41 wild rats into 58 guinea pigs during a period of three months, he had been able to produce in three groups of guinea pigs typical cases of infectious jaundice altogether identical with the findings in the guinea pigs which died of the injection of the j.a.panese and Belgian strains of the disease. The germs taken from wild rats caught near New York produced death in guinea pigs within nine to twelve days.

AMERICA'S GREAT SERVICE IN WAR ZONE.

In studying the conditions and helping to fight the dangers encountered in the battlefields and camps of Europe, no country in the world rendered a greater service than America. Long before the country entered the war hundreds of American nurses, ambulance drivers and surgeons were on the battlefields and in the hospitals of Belgium, France and England.

Men who were leaders in the medical and surgical world gave their services to the Allies, and almost every hospital in the United States sent some of its staff.

Through the efforts and study of Dr. Alexis Carrel, of New York, deaths from wounds received in battle were reduced almost 90 per cent. by a system of treatment which he devised. Dr. Carrel began his work in 1914, at Compiegne, in connection with the military hospital, and in collaboration with the Dakin Research Laboratory, under the auspices of the Rockefeller Foundation.

Using a solution of sodium hypochlorite, the plain method of treating wounds which proved such a great boon, was described at the Congress of Surgeons in Philadelphia in 1916, where many of the wonders of war surgery were described. By means of a rubber tube, which is run through or into the wound, the injury is flushed continuously by the solution, for a period of hours or minutes, according to the nature and character of the wound.

The inflammation is reduced, the wound cleaned, and blood poisoning is averted. Under the treatment the soldier's stay in a hospital is reduced weeks and even months, and, as has been stated with authority, where in the old days twenty operations would have been necessary, the modern methods have reduced the percentage to a point where the twenty has become as one.

The story of surgery itself and what it has done in modern warfare would make a wonderful volume. The shattered bones of the legs and arms have been spliced, and laid side by side in open wounds, to knit together and practically form a new limb. Artificial hands, feet, and legs have been made by ingenious mechanics, which are so perfect that those who have been deprived of their natural facilities can use them with a degree of facility never before believed possible.

RESULT OF SCIENTIFIC SURGERY.

Armless men and legless men have worked in the munition factories of both France and of England, and the fact that they are able to do so is due to the genius of surgeons and of scientists. Thoroughness and preparation, coolness in execution and scientific accuracy in all directions is the modern necessity in warfare.

What this means in modern battle, as demonstrated in the last important conflict in the clearing of German East Africa by British forces, was described by Reuters' correspondent in an account of the battle of Rufiji River.

This was the last campaign personally commanded by Major General Jan Christian s.m.u.ts, the former Boer commander, and resulted in giving the British control of all the coastline and the inhabitable portion of German East Africa.

For two weary months the army lay upon its weapons, consolidating, reorganizing, rebuilding railway lines and piling up great dumps of food and ridding itself of its sick and wounded. Then it moved forward from Morogoro. The object of the advance was the ejection of the enemy from his trenches on the Mgeta River and the seizure of the pa.s.sages of the Rufiji River.

The battle was directed and controlled from an observation hill at Dathumi, but General s.m.u.ts spent little time on the hill. He had made all the dispositions and issued his orders. Nothing remained for him to do and he was back in his camp calmly reading a book.

In the straw hut the brigadier general sat at a table on which was an oriented map showing the strategic and geographical points of the plans which lay before us, at his elbow the telephone and just below the hut the wireless instrument incessantly emitted sparks. Higher up the slope of the hill were the observing stations of the battery commanders.

SIGNALED BEGINNING OF BATTLE.

The burning of huts at Kiruru signaled the beginning of the battle. The brigadier general, a polite little man who has lectured at the staff college for twenty years and who knows the last word in the science of warfare, especially of artillery, called the howitzer battery by telephone.

"Open fire a little to the right of the palm tree," he said. "You have the elevation and direction. The Nigerians will be on the move." Just behind the palm tree and a little to the right a great brown cloud of mud and smoke rose high in the air. From the plain came the boom of heavy guns and all along the river branch rose clouds of smoke, mud and dust.

The staff officer handed in a telegram reading: "The infantry are now about to advance; they ask artillery support."

"Bring the field guns into action," said the general.

It was all so very matter of fact. This little man, who was about to let loose upon the German trenches a h.e.l.l's broth of fire and disaster, acted as if he were in his own drawing room, deciding how many lumps of sugar he would take with his tea.

Down below on the plain the howitzers were lobbing 60-pound sh.e.l.ls into the German Askaris, the Nigerians were advancing by sharp rushes and the rat-tat of the machine guns and the crackle of musketry broke very faintly. Airplanes sailed above us. A message came from the Nigerians, "We are going to take the enemy's trenches; please lift gunfire." The order was pa.s.sed along, "All guns lift two degrees."

Little black dots, like tiny ants, are running where the sh.e.l.ls are bursting. The Nigerians are rus.h.i.+ng the trenches. The forward observing officer reports that the enemy is retiring. The 15-pounders, man-killing guns, shower shrapnel on the German line of retreat.

SUGGESTS A CUP OF TEA.

The infantry report having occupied the German first line trenches, halting for one hour to consolidate. The brigadier-general commented on the difficulty of observation in the humid atmosphere and suggested a cup of tea. It seemed that nothing more would happen until after lunch, so I visited the commander-in-chief. He was occupied for the moment with a volume by George Gisslog and was satisfied with the reports he had received. By dark the whole of the German entrenchments were in our hands.

A volume could be written alone on the changes in tactics which have been developed and practiced by the military geniuses of the contending forces. In the European War the range of artillery and infantry fire was three times what it was in the Franco-Prussian War. The flattening of the trajectory, which means making the bullets go more nearly on a straight line instead of traveling in an arc, has made the fire so effective as to compel the soldiers to "travel on their stomachs." To crawl along the ground like alligators, or advance like moles digging their way into the earth.

The tremendous range of the modern rifle, single arm, or rapid-fire gun, and the development of more powerful explosives for ammunition have wrought this change. The bullet will travel a longer distance at a horizontal position than in the old days when ordinary black powder and a smooth-bore gun were used, and so at hundreds of yards distance the soldiers can aim direct to kill, without making elevation allowances.

The machine gun has made it possible for the men to fire from four to five shots for every one that was fired in the Franco-Prussian War and probably ten for every one that was fired in the Civil War. The only time the soldiers exposed themselves on the army frontiers were when they were storming trenches, and this was not attempted until the trench had suffered bombardment so it was made untenable.

DIFFICULT MOUNTAIN FIGHTING.

Probably nothing in the warfare of nations has been more colorful and replete with surprises than the campaign waged by the Italian soldiers on the Alpine pa.s.ses between Italy and the Austrian strongholds, and in the discussion of modern warfare, a brief description of some of the work of these intrepid mountain fighters is interesting.

Much of this fighting has been the most difficult known in the annals of modern warfare, save, perhaps, that done by the famous Younghusband British Expedition to Thibet. And that, by comparison, was a very small matter.

The mere height--alt.i.tude--at which the Italian warfare against the Austrians was carried on has been sufficient to entail enormous difficulties and a great additional strain, due actually to difficult breathing in a rarefied atmosphere.

The warfare in the clouds which has characterized the struggle along the Isonzo front has been conducted at an alt.i.tude seldom less than 8,000 and often rising to 12,000 feet, which is well within the realm of eternal snow.

Naturally, therefore, most of the fighting was done in bitter cold. To this fact add the other that the Italian soldiers who carried it on were almost exclusively men who had not been accustomed to the cold. They had been drawn from among dwellers in a semitropical climate, and one gets an idea of the immense accomplishments of this army which struggled in the skies.

The average American knows the Italian as immensely industrious, but perhaps is disinclined to credit him with great constructive ability or engineering genius. He would change his estimate of him if he could see him fight and study his battlefield. The Italian warfare of the mountain peak and gorges has been a warfare of construction, even more than it has been a warfare of destruction, and has been rendered possible only by the exercise of engineering genius comparable with that which sent our world-beating American railways through the famous Rocky Mountain pa.s.ses!

HALTED BY INTIMIDATION.

The fact that Italy's warfare has been invariably against positions stronger than her own is the result of the fact that while, since 1866, Austria continually strengthened her frontier with fortifications, most of them of ferro-concrete, the Italians were not able to fortify at all.

Every step in that direction brought forth threats of war. These began at a time when Italy was in no condition to fight, before, as a unified nation, she became a world-power.

Being weak, she was prevented from making any preparations for defense against a foe which continually was obviously getting ready for attack upon her. The mere commencement of preparations might have precipitated war. But Austria continually prepared. Besides, the Italians ever have been a peace-loving nation.

As a natural and inevitable consequence of all these conditions all the dominating positions along the Austro-Italian frontier were strongly fortified by the Austrians. They have long occupied the crest of every mountain in such a way that their guns could rake any Italian approach from below, along a front of 450 miles--about the distance from New York to Buffalo, and almost the same as that of the whole French-British-Belgian eastern front in this war.

During the winter of 1916, one of the most exceptionally hard winters known in the annals of the Italian Weather Service, the Italians not only have been fighting for their sunny homeland, but have been fighting in a region of eternal snow.

This snow was an obstacle extremely hard to overcome. It may be said never to have been less than six yards deep on the Isonzo front, so the task of the consolidation of positions, enabling troops at once to resist attack and protect themselves from a.s.sault from the rear, was highly difficult.

TYPICAL ROAD BUILDERS.

The Italians were ever road-builders, descendants, as they are, of those Romans who built roads for all Europe. While the Austrians were fully supplied with roads of the best and most modern character, there were hundreds of miles on the Italian side where there were not even mule-tracks.

Here was a vast problem.

Literally millions of soldiers were not free to fight, but had been drafted for the road-building work. Carrying picks and shovels, managing steam-shovels, working electric hoists, stringing supporting cables, they were as truly fighting men, however, as any who ever bore rifles or worked machine-guns.

Miles of the roads were rebuilt under Austrian fire, by men who built them well enough, even in the great 8,000-foot heights, that they could bear heavy artillery of vast weights without suffering damage. They built them in such easy gradients that heavy artillery could be moved speedily, the guns and motor-lorries that pa.s.sed over them frequently weighing as much as fifteen tons.