Shells we learned to disregard,
but the machine gun is the master in this war.
"Now we near the river at a flat country farm. The territory is scarred
with trenches, and it is impossible to say at first who is in them, so
incidental and separate are the fortunes of this riverside battle. The
Germans are on our bank enfilading the lines of the Allies' trenches. We
creep up and the Germans come into sight out of the trenches, rush to
the bank, and are scattered and mashed. The Allies follow with a fierce
bayonet charge.
"The Germans do not wait. They rush to the bridges and are swept away by
the deadliest destroyer of all, the machine gun. The bridge is blown up,
but who can say by whom. Quickly the train runs back.
"'A brisk day,' remarks the correspondent. 'Not so bad,' replies the
officer. So the days pass."
The Telegraph's correspondent in Belgium, who, accompanied by a son of
the Belgian War Minister, M. de Broqueville, made a tour of the
battleground in the Dixmude district last Wednesday, says:
"No pen could do justice to the grandeur and horror of the scene. As far
as the eye could reach nothing could be seen but burning villages and
bursting shells. I realized for the first time how completely the motor
car had revolutionized warfare and how every other factor was now
dominated by the absence or presence of this unique means of transport.
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