Artillery is now the most
essential instrument of war. You may still get along with rather bad
infantry; you may still hold out even after the loss of the aerial
ascendancy, but so soon as your guns fail you approach defeat.
The backbone process of the whole art of war is the manufacture in
overwhelming quantities, the carriage and delivery of shell upon the
vulnerable points of the enemy's positions. That is, so to speak,
the essential blow. Even the infantryman is now hardly more than the
residuary legatee after the guns have taken their toll.
I have now followed nearly every phase in the life history of a shell
from the moment when it is a segment of steel bar just cut off, to the
moment when it is no more than a few dispersed and rusting rags and
fragments of steel--pressed upon the stray visitor to the battlefield as
souvenirs. All good factories are intensely interesting places to visit,
but a good munition factory is romantically satisfactory. It is as
nearly free from the antagonism of employer and employed as any factory
can be. The busy sheds I visited near Paris struck me as being the most
living and active things in the entire war machine. Everywhere else I
saw fitful activity, or men waiting. I have seen more men sitting about
and standing about, more bored inactivity, during my tour than I have
ever seen before in my life.
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