Right Up on the Firing-line No risk was too great for a Hospital Corps man, if he could bring relief to the wounded. The ambulances sometimes penetrated as far as the trenches, often under bombardment. had really been an army of women who declared war against the Duke of Bohemia and for a period kept him and his court in terror of their lives. There were stories of German women fighting disguised as men, who had been captured by the Russians; of Victoria Maria Lanz, an eighteen-year-old Tyrolean girl, who, after fighting for two years with the Italian army, had been seriously wounded and decorated for valor. Several Russian women were mentioned who, like Botchkareva, had gone to war with the men, among them Mademoiselle Skrydhoff, who, having gone to fight in her own father's regiment, had won a medal of St. George for discovering a German telephone hidden in a loft. The recruiting of the women in Russia became popular. There were recruiting stations at Petrograd, at Moscow, at Kiev. Some women who had been to the front as Sisters of Mercy were anxious now to go back with guns in their hands. The daughters of some of the wealthier people began to go into training. A university student, Mademoiselle Fromenka, chairman of the Women's Military League, raised a battalion which was to have a regular staff, its own transport and medical service, its own signal corps, and a machine-gun company with four guns, as well as an expert scouting detach ment of twenty-six Cossack girls. A fashionable girls' school near Petrograd was turned into a barracks. Pamphlets were issued, some addressed to the army at the front, "The time will soon be at hand when it will be better for you to face ten German bayonets than one tigress mother of Russia." One was a pathetic appeal to England and France, "Our children worthy of the name of heroes have shed their blood . . . but now German propaganda has paralyzed our valiant army . . . we declare that Russia shall be free!" But the force of eight or nine hundred women could do little. All that fall Russia drifted toward anarchy. In September, Vera Botchkareva, whose harsh tongue and blunt ways did not endear her to some of her followers, was almost mobbed by a battalion at Moscow. In November, when the Bolsheviki were taking Petrograd, and Kerensky was a fugitive in the Winter Palace, a few of the women and a remnant of the Cadets essayed to protect the palace with its five hundred sick and wounded. They surrendered only when gunboats were sent up the Neva and threatened to fire upon the city. Then, when Petrograd was at last in the hands of the Bolsheviki, Mr. Buchanan, the British ambassador, had to intervene to protect the few remaining members of the women's regiment that fell into their power. GRENADES Lyddite Does What the Husky Arm of the Old Grenadier Used to Do IN the days of the old-fashioned, muzzle-loading musket the hand grenade was at least equally useful. It was merely a hollow iron shell thrown by the grenadier after he had lit the fuse from the always-burning match that he carried with him. Sometimes the fuse went out before reaching the target. Sometimes the grenade flew back and hit the grenadier. Occasionally it went straight and made a big hole. In these days of rapid-firing rifles and long-range field-guns, however, no one entertained any notion that the hand grenade would still be found effective. As the war progressed and enemy trenches were dug at a distance of fifty yards or so, it was found that a rifle of two-and-one-half-mile range would not hit a man with his head down in a pit fifty yards away. To meet this emergency the Germans evolved a short-barreled gun with the power to heave a few hundredweight of explosives into the air far enough for them to fall into trenches dug no more than a hundred yards away. The British hand grenade is more nearly the shape of the old-fashioned one. It consists first of a piece of cane with a metal head on it, containing the bursting charge of lyddite and the detonator or exploding arrangement to act when the grenade strikes. The handle and head together are sixteen inches long. Attached to the end of the cane handle is a three-foot bit of cloth, the tail, to make the grenade fly true and be sure that it strikes head first on its detonator. Normally the machine is carried by a hook, handle downward, at the soldier's belt. When the time comes to use it the soldier unhooks it from his belt, turns a cap at the head of the grenade until the word "remove," painted on the cap, is exposed, and then removes the safety cap. The tail is then unwound from the handle, the safety-pin locking the detonator plunger is withdrawn, and the grenade is ready to throw. The soldier is told to be sure that the three-foot tail does not become entangled with him or any object near him when it leaves his hand. Lyddite, the explosive used, is made of carbolic and nitric acids. The French melinite and the Japanese shimose are similar explosives under another name. This charge is five or six times as powerful as the old-fashioned black powder formerly universally used in missiles of this kind. The latest development of the hand grenade has been invented by a Norwegian engineer, N. W. Aasen, whose mine grenades work practically without the help of soldiers. Each grenade, weighing about nine pounds, contains four hundred projectiles, together with some ounces of a very powerful explosive. This mechanism can be set working only by the action of an electric current supplied to the grenade through a rope-like cable. The grenade and cable are buried in the ground, so as to be entirely invisible to an enemy. When the firing takes place the projectiles sweep horizontally over the surface of the ground in an area of more than nine hundred square yards. It is said that grenades once planted may remain in the ground for years without suffering any damage or betraying their presence by explosion unless ignited by the electric spark. Farmers may even till the field without discovering them, if they lie deep enough. V. WAR IN AIR, ON LAND, AND SEA AIRCRAFT The Eyes of the War A BATTLE IN THE AIR By C. L. EDHOLM FLYING at no great distance above the ground, two large British airplanes, each carrying two men, were approaching the German lines when they were observed by a couple of flyers whose planes were at a far greater greater height and which displayed the black cross that marked them as German aviators. The Germans immediately turned the noses of their Fokker machines downward and came whizzing through the air like shooting-stars straight upon the two intruders. As they dived, they spit out a stream of fire and lead from their machine guns and they dropped in such a fashion that the bullets were scattered circlewise about the mark they hoped to hit. Almost at the same instant two light machines, single-seaters, carrying the Allied insignia, dropped from a still higher altitude and swooped like hawks behind the tails of the German fightingplanes. Before the Germans had reached their prey they were being raked by the deadly fire of the Allied pursuers. The fuel-tank of one of the Germans was struck by a bullet and burst into flames. The Fokker crashed to the ground thousands of feet below, behind his own trenches. The other German might have met the same fate but for a quick movement that looked like sure death at first. He swung his diving plane straight toward the earth, then swung it still farther so that it was flying upside down for a moment, and came back on the up turn of a loop that brought him right behind his pursuer. It was now the German's turn to direct a hail of bullets at his enemy's back, raking him from rudder to propeller, and the Allied flyer would have been done for if he had not made a quick side-slip that brought him out of range. Before the German could renew his attack, another fighter had entered the combat, an Allied scout that had been flying so far above the rest that it was a mere pin-point in the sky. It had been doing what aviators call "ceiling work" that is, soaring at the highest altitude in order to guard its friends below. At the sight of the duel it had dropped like a dart, and now it was flashing straight at the German, who was taken quite by surprise. The other two Allied planes had, by this time, secured a position above the German and were preparing to force him toward their own lines, and the Teuton flyer saw that he had no chance against this combination. Besides, his ammunition was nearly gone and he began to think that the best place for him was the fatherland; so diving, looping, and zigzagging, he made for home at terrific speed. Though closely pursued, he escaped with nothing worse than half a dozen bullet-holes in his wings. The Allied fighters swung slowly back toward their own lines, still keeping |