Popular Science Monthly 



409 



A Waving Flag in Badge Form for 

 Your Buttonhole 



ONE of the novelties brought out 

 by the war is a figure of Uncle 

 Sam waving a small American flag 

 above his top-hat. Owing to the 

 construction of the badge, the 

 flag actually moves, as in waving, 

 at the slightest motion of the 

 wearer. The badge consists of a 

 metal figure of Uncle Sam, with 

 the flag at the end of an up 

 raised arm, which isn't an arm 

 at all but a flexible spring 

 fastened to the top of the 

 shoulder of the figure, as the 

 accompanying illustration 

 shows. Each time the wearer 

 of the flag moves, the spring 

 jumps up and down and side- 

 ways, giving the flag a waving 

 motion. By means of a stick 

 pin on the back, the badge 

 may be readily attached to 

 the hat, coat, dress front, or 

 even the neck-tie, wherever it is preferred 



The flag is 

 attached to a 

 flexible- 

 spring arm, 

 as shown at 

 the right 



means of a chain from a scaffolding on 



wheels. The chain is attached to the ram 



at a point which will enable the operator 



to pick up the other end without 



much effort. 



That the ram is effective as a de- 

 structive agent is manifest in the 

 photograph. The side of the 

 peasant's cottage which lies in 

 ruins was evidently of brick or 

 masonry before the Germans de- 

 cided to ram it to pieces. All 

 that now remains of it is a 

 few tottering beams support- 

 ing a twisted and warped 

 roof. The two wheels in front 

 of the apparatus and the wire 

 handles on the bottom 

 pieces make the appar- 

 atus a portable one. It 

 was probably moved from 

 place to place as the Ger- 

 mans retreated through a 

 devastated and shell-torn 

 country to the more for- 

 midable positions in the 

 rear. 



Demolishing French Cottages with a 

 Battering Ram 



THE Germans have left behind them 

 another tool of destruction during 

 their so-called victorious retreat to the 

 Hindenburg and Wotan lines. It is a 

 battering ram such as Helen of Troy might 

 have looked down upon from her father's 

 watchtower. But the Germans did not 

 use it for destroying walls round fortified 

 cities, as did the warring ancients. They 



used it for 



smashing in the f 

 sides of peas- 

 ants' cottages 

 and reducing 

 those structures 

 to piles of debris. 

 In the accom- 

 panying photo- 

 graph a French 

 man is illus- 

 trating for 

 civilization 

 just how 

 the ram 

 was operated. 

 A heavy pole 

 of sturdy wood 

 is suspended by 



© Underwood and Underwood 



How the retreating Germans wrecked peasants' cot- 

 tages with an old-fashioned wooden battering ram 



What Six Gallons of Good Gasoline 

 Can Do 



FEW persons have any conception of 

 the immense amount of energy that 

 is stored in the natural oil products in 

 everyday usage. Take, for instance, the 

 gasoline that is used in automobiles day 

 by day. The motorist will be interested 

 to know that if the same amount of 

 energy that is used up in "autoing" a 

 hundred miles were employed to milk 

 cows, some ten 

 thousand gal- 

 lons of the 

 milk could 

 be obtained! 

 Or, if the same 

 energy were 

 used in patri- 

 otic gardening, 

 fully four acres 

 of ground could 

 be plowed . 

 That amount of 

 energy could 

 also mix up 

 eighteen hun- 

 dred cubic feet 

 of the thickest 

 cement. 



