HEAD lam: developments in artillery 309 



converted from breech loading to quick firing; the other, No. 

 6173, had only been made the previous year, but there was not 

 a rivet's difference between them; only, in the new gun, time 

 had been saved by omitting engraving the Imperial cipher on 

 the breech! 



Ammunition. As with the guns, so with the ammunition, but 

 perhaps to a still greater extent, production has been the great 

 problem, for from early in the first autumn of the war our stocks 

 of ammunition were practically exhausted, and we gunners had 

 over and over to turn a deaf ear to the calls for help from our 

 almost exhausted infantry. Everything possible was done to ex- 

 pedite output. , National shell factories were set up all over the 

 country, for the smallest shop could at least make 18-pounder 

 shrapnel bodies, and delicate women toiled long hours at the 

 lathes. We adopted designs which were not the best but 

 which were the easiest to make, and then faced the danger of 

 ''prematures." 



Prematures. This bursting of guns by the premature explo- 

 sion of the shells is almost inevitable when one has to depend on 

 hurried and unskilled production : it is one of the risks which must 

 be run when shells have to be rushed out to the front. But the 

 loss of guns and men may be serious, and it is always a trying ordeal 

 to the artillery. The French with their large expenditure of 

 high explosive shell were the first to suffer severely from it. I 

 remember seeing many of their wrecked 75 's when we were 

 fighting side by side at Ypres at the time of the first gas attack, 

 but they bore it with the calm fortitude which has been their 

 attitude through all these long years of trial, and when our own 

 time came, their experts placed all their experience at our dis- 

 posal, and rendered us invaluable assistance in getting through 

 our trials, and I would like especially to mention here the names 

 of General Gossot, an artilleryman who has gained more than 

 a national reputation as a contributor to science, and General 

 St. Claire Deville, whose name is a household word in France as 

 "the father of the seventy-five." It will do no harm now, and 

 may do good, to tell you how serious our position was at one 

 time. [The ratio of prematures, at first irregular, then rapidly 

 decreasing, was shown by tabled.] 



