BORDEAUX-BEGLES : GENERAL WAREHOUSES OE THE HEALTH SERVICE 



Like her chief munitions works at Le Creusot, France finds it expedient to keep her 

 principal stores of surgical cottons and health-service supplies far removed from the imme- 

 diate scenes of hostility. Not only are these warehouses beyond the zone of possible air- 

 plane raids, but, being at Bordeaux, they are convenient depots for the receipt of Red Cross 

 shipments from England and America. 



panied the guns to insure efficient hand- 

 ling. 



From the above it is seen how gener- 

 ously France came to the support of her 

 allies in the most important branch of 

 military science ; and when we reflect on 

 the enormous amount of material de- 

 stroyed during the two and one-half 

 years of war, we begin to perceive what 

 a drain this has been on the resources of 

 France. 



Reliance upon the decisive effect of ar- 

 tillery in battle has been a tradition with 

 the French army since the victories of the 

 first Napoleon. He it was who originally 

 employed artillery in a massed formation. 

 At Wagram, at Lutzen, at Hanau, this 

 maneuver of concentrated artillery fire 

 gave the victory to the armies of France. 

 Napoleon III tried to continue the theo- 

 ries of his brilliant ancestor, but failed ; 

 yet the influence of the great master of 

 tactics continued ; so it is but natural that 

 the use of artillery in war should reach 



its highest perfection through French de- 

 velopment. 



The French have relied for success in 

 the fighting today oil the ancient maneu- 

 ver of the Napoleonic era — a mass of 

 guns firing at a given point in the enemy 

 line. At the same time they endeavored 

 to make the practice of concentrated fire 

 more effective through increased speed 

 and accuracy of fire. 



THE BIG GUN VS. THE LIGHTER ONE 



Before the opening of the great war 

 there were two schools of artillery tac- 

 tics — the French, which believed in the 

 above theory of rapid field-gun shelling, 

 and the German, which pinned its faith 

 to the effectiveness of huge guns having 

 a greater range than the ordinary field 

 gun and of course throwing a far more 

 destructive exploding charge. The ex- 

 treme of the German theory was the 

 widely advertised 42-centimeter cannon, 

 supposed to be able to reduce the strong- 



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