Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 88.djvu/840

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��Popular Science Montlily

���London's perambulators are now equip- ped with sidelights to avoid danger in the darkened streets

London War Affects Baby Carriages

LONDON has passed an unusual law J which requires that baby carriages shall be equipped with sidelights. While no adequate explanation is given, it is believed that the new ruling was put into effect because of the darkness into which the streets are plunged because of the fear of Zeppelin raids. Baby carriages, while not dangerous objects, are objects of danger, and the fact that they are compelled by law to be equipped with a lamp to light their way, lessens the possibilities of collisions. The law requires that the light shall show white in front and red in the rear.

��How War Mobilizes the Non- Combatant

ONE of the impressions of war received by Dr. George W. Crile, who served with the American Ambu- lance at the front, was that a civil community is terrorized when it is first

��under fire, but that in time this terror wears away and life under the sound of shells goes on quite normally. ("A Mechanistic View of War and Peace," The Macmillan Company).

"I observed that from Furnes to Ypres the farmers were quietly tilling the soil under active shell fire. In one instance just at the outskirts of Ypres I saw a fresh excavation made by a shell which had fallen on a newly-made furrow. The farmer was working at one end of the furrow and the German artillery at the other end. The farmer seemed no more disturbed than the artillery. An aeroplane fight high above our heads called forth the rapt attention of everyone in the fields, on the roads and in the houses, but even so the excitement was less than one usually sees at a baseball game.

"In Ypres, so long under bombardment, and so extensively battered, some of the citizens had stolen back in spite of shells and resumed their daily routine. I recall a little plaster house at the edge of the town, in the doorway of which two women were pleasantly gossiping and two little girls were playing with dolls. The nearer the front one goes, the more quiet and serious every one seems. It is the solemn atmosphere of the consecration of human life."

��Adjustable Footrest

AN ingenious German named Stickler L has invented a support for the leg below the knee and the foot, which can be easily adjusted to any form of chair or bench and afterwards removed with- out trouble when the need for its use is over. Thus, one of these footrests can serve a number of seats.

It has always been one of the draw- backs even to the most comfortable of ordinary chairs that while the upper part of the body is well supported, the feet, when they fail to touch the ground,

���A comfortable foot and leg rest which can be used with any chair

lack a rest. This enables one to work in a comfortable sitting position.

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