Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 89.djvu/809

 Popular Science Monthly

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��around the artillery scrap-heap, de- tached a few parts from an old musket, cut some strips from a brass "75" shell-case, bought a small piece of detector-crystal, and in a short time was sending a messenger out soon after midnight ever>' night to take to the men in the first lines the day's news.

At midnight of the date of the inter\iew the communique was a long one, being the first news of the French offensive in Picardy which had just begun. A messenger took the glatl tidings back to his brothers in the trenches. Then the electrician adjusted the instrument so that it intcrcepttxl messages sent out by some German portable field wireless apparatus. The German spark is pitched very high and musical, while the French is ilull and staccato. A message sent out from an aeroplane was intercepted also by the crude but practical receiving instrument.

��For military purposes the wireless is not used as much by the French as by the Germans. The French, wherever possible, use the telephone instead; and along some parts of the front they have established underground lines impregnable to shell fire. The French have closed automobiles equipped with complete telephone switchboards, so that tem- porary exchanges may be established at short notice wherever they may be needed. Where the portable wireless is used on the F"rench front it is carried on a motor-tricycle affair so that it may be taken very close to the first lines.

In the recent ofifensive on the Somme electricity was a very potent aid to the French success. The village of Dompierre, which before the offensive was in the hands of the Germans, had been mined by the French from one extremity to the other. The principal excavation

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