Popular Science Monthly 



669 



out come Hans and Fritz, dragging their 

 Maxims, and then the rest of the crew from 

 their dugout shelters — and the machine 

 guns operated by a little handful of men 

 are likely to win the battle against hundreds 

 of infantrymen. 



The machine gun is equivalent to the fire 

 of from fifty to one hundred men, but as 

 the gun is usually mounted on a stationar\- 

 foundation, especially in the German 

 service, and holds its position, not 

 being affected by 

 nerves or fear, and 

 being worked by cool, 

 desperate, picked men, 

 it is really equal to far 

 more than that num- 

 ber, because of the 

 greater effect of its 

 fire. 



The German Maxim 

 is mounted on 

 a combined tri- 

 pod and sledge, 

 and with mount 

 and gun com- 

 plete weighs 

 s e \' e n t y - f i V e 

 pounds. It is steadier than the light guns 

 of the French service, and still when it 

 is turned over on the sledge-shaped part 

 of the mount, the crew can haul it speed- 

 ily out of harm's way or to a new field of 

 activity as fast as the French can move 

 their lighter but clumsier-to-carry Hotch- 

 kiss gun. 



Just at present the Germans are the 

 machine gun artists of the civilized world, 

 and the guns play the most important part 



A machine gun knocked dowTi, ready for transportation. 

 It weighs about seventy-five pounds with its mount 



Int. Film .S,rv 



German soldiers transporting one of their machine 

 gims and mount to a new field of activity 



in holding their line on the west front. 

 The other day an American chief of ord- 

 nance of our army, asked for funds to build 

 seventeen thousand machine guns — there 

 being about one thousand on hand! 



One of the marked features of the ma- 

 chine gun is the encouraging effect on the 

 troops on its own side, and the terrifying 

 effect on savage peoples. Not long after 

 the Spanish War. the 

 American Army au- 

 thorities found a job 

 on hand on the island 

 of Sulu, subduing a 

 band of a thousand 

 or more men, wom- 

 en and children of 

 the bandit variety, 

 who had ensconced 

 themselves in the 

 crater of Mount 

 Dajo, a high and 

 precipitous iso- 

 lated peak that 

 had been an ex- 

 tinct volcano. 



Lieu tenan t 

 Leigh ton Powell, 

 who was with "Machine Gun Parker" at 

 Santiago and had caught the fever from 

 the famous American believer in that 

 sort of weapon, found, neglected and 

 hidden in dust and cosmoline, a Colt 

 machine gun in the warehouse at Sulu. He 

 asked and received permission from the 

 scoffing infantr>- officers to form a machine 

 gun section and to take the gun up the 

 mountain with the attacking force. He 

 gathered together a group of infantr\-men, 

 made gunners out of them, drilled 

 them faithfully and hard — only to be 

 left behind by the main body of 

 troops when the columns departed 

 for the attack. That evening, how- 

 ever, there came a messenger for 

 Lieutenant Powell to bring on his 

 blamed machine gun — the army had 

 found the mountain a tough-looking 

 nut to crack. So joyfully they packed 

 up the Colt and trekked for the big 

 mountain. 



That night two columns crept up 

 the mountainside. Powell made a 

 Moro sandwich, with a Moro carr>'ing 



J I ammunition or machine-gun part, 

 then an American gunner, then a 

 ' Moro, then an American, and so on, to 

 keep the natives from sneaking off 

 in the dark. Every now and then the 



