Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 92.djvu/540

 King Weather Rules the War

In spite of all improvements in military art, the elements are absolutely supreme

��Lying down on the job. He believes "too much is enough"

��LAST October a fleet of thirteen Zeppe- lins left Germany for an air raid over England. These huge and relatively slow craft are at the mercy of the winds to a much greater degree than the small, swift airplanes, and their sailings are nearly al- ways timed by the mete- orological conditions present and prospective. Germany has able weather forecasters, but they are ham- pered in their work by the fact that the war has cut off their reports from western Europe and the Atlantic — the regions from which come storms and weather changes. Apparently there was a serious miscalculation in connection with the raid of Oct. 19 20, for when the airships turned homeward they had to face strong northeast winds, while dense fogs below blotted out the landmarks. At least four of them drifted far out of their route and were brought down in France; one, the L-49, intact. A fifth is believed to have foundered in the Mediterranean. The crew of the L-49 suffered severely with the cold, the thermometer falling to 36 degrees below zero when they were at the greatest altitude. One man's hand was so badly frozen that it had to be ampu- tated. So much for weather.

In the air, on land and on sea, the weather is playing a capital role in the present world conflict. Always a prom- inent factor in warfare and often a decisive one, it has assumed greater importance than ever before, on account of the addi- tion of aircraft to the world's armaments; the use of asphyxiating gases, borne by the winds; the effects of extreme heat and cold upon the operation of internal- combustion motors; the relation of rain- fall and the freezing of the soil to the con- struction and maintenance of a vast system of trenches; and, indeed, in a host of ways that entered hardly, if at all, into

���the calculations of military experts a few short years ago.

"Mud Is the Greatest Enemy of the British Army"

Beginning with its predominant in- fluence upon the crops, and hence upon the food supply of the warring na- tions, one could fill pages with an enu- meration of the effects exercised by the weather upon the progress of the struggle. The newspaper reports from the battle zones abound with such episodes as the hampering of operations by heavy rain, the obstacles or advantages offered by fog, the miseries inflicted upon troops by heat and cold, the freezing and thawing of rivers and marshes, the ice blockades of northern harbors, the obstruction of mountain roads with snow, and the at- mospheric vicissitudes experienced by aviators.

Veterans of the American Civil War, who thought they knew something about mud, must now take lessons on the sub- ject from the men who are fighting in western ?]urope. "Mud," says Lieut. G. B. Mackie, "is the greatest enemy the British army has had to face in Franco, and the only .one it feared." The mud of northern France and Flanders will spatter the pages of every history of the war. In the vivid world pictures of Henri Bar- busse, mud is the thing that makes the most durable impression. Nobody who has read "Le Feu" can ever forget one

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