~ selves. . men as the Little * plorers, who marched through the EARS KUL OFF BIGGEST MEN NAPOLEONIC WARS HAD BAD EFFECT ON FRANCE. He Won. His Victories at the Ex- pense of His Own | People. é Correspondents .on the European "battlefields have been 'struck with the smallness of stature .of ~ the Erench soldiers, and with the French people in general. They are an inferior race -physically to the English or the Germans. Although they live in practically the same climate and under the same ocondi- tions, they have not peen able to attain the size of their neighbors, Another striking fact is the ference: ii size of Frenchmen -them The American- Frenchmen, whose ancestors came here prior to the French revolution, is much su- perior in physique to the French- man of to-day in France. While the Frenchman with a long Ameri- can ancestry is every whit the equal in size to the Englishman and the erman,-hi3 European cousin seems 'to be of a smaller species. The answer is found in the loss of life of the Napoleonic wars. Na poleon was a smal! man himself. He was known affectionately by his Corporal, but prior to Napoleon's time the French asa rule, were big people. The ex- wilderness of America and explor- ed the wilds of Canada and the Mis- sissippi Valley, were men of massive build for the most part. They were the pick of the earth as far as physique is concerned. The trap- pers and early French settlers who succeeded them, were Men of Good Physique. Their descendants are the present French-Americans. While Napoleon occupies more pages of history than any other 'man, he put his name there at the expense of his own people. War takes the bravest and biggest men. Every war is a sacrifice of the best. With all the world against him, Na- poleon had to go to unusual ex tremes to win his ends. He raised himself to the imperial throne, but he did it by lopping off the heads ef his own people and by taking their flesh. When Napoleon finally was im 'prisoned at Saint Helena, the aver- age Frenchman was two inches smaller than he was at re time of pleted his career in eating twenty pounds of flesh from his own peo- ple. While the world has marveled for a century at the great genius of Na- poleon it has had to admit that his genius had no good effect on the physique of the French people. Napoleon cared little for his sick and wounded, That probably heightened the list of casualties on his campaigns. The following fig- ures show how dearly Napoleon's wars cost the French people : In the Peninsular campaign the casualty OW rey ; 'campaign es Leipzig campaign cost 00, en. Those three cam- signe followed one after each other and were at the close of Na poleon's career. fhe Present War in Europe<"™}. will have a similar effect an thé size of the future Europeans. The na- tion which will be likely to suffer most is the most efficient fighting uation. The indications now are that nation is Germany. She _ is fighting on ali sides She has many more men who can hgnt than anys other nation. England has only a few hundred thousand fighting meu on the continent. France has legs than Germany. Russia probably has a good many more fighting men than Germany. but she has not so many so fiercely engaged. Should the Germans-win, their victory will be won at the price of their own bravest and best men. Napoleon was considered victori- ous up to the time of the Russian campaign. He there lost so many men that he never was able to fight as he did before: d he deen de- feated before crossing Germany he might have won in the end. a he would not have left his army in Russia to be eaten by the wee or buried by the Cossacks. Napoleon, in speaking of the dis- aster at Saint Helena afterward, admitted it was a big mistake. Re- ports have it that his divorcéd wife, Josephine, advised him not to go on the n. Speaking to Gen- eral tenn ta i of the disaster, he said: "T did not want to make war on Russia, but M. de Kourakine sent menacing note on the subject of the conduct of Davout troops in Ham- burg. Bassano and Ohampagny, then-my forei ministers, were in- ferior men. y did not under- stand the real a that had div- tated the note and I could not pos- sibly in my position exchange e¢x-| doctor. nations with Kourakine. They persuaded me that the note was that Russia, which had withdrawn -- troops from Moldavia, was g0- ng to take the initiative and was ahont to enter Warsaw. ~Then Kourakine Fag menacing and ask- ed for his passports. I really |thought that Russia wanted war. I Set Out for the Army. I sent Lauriston to Alexander. He was not received, I had already sent Narbonne and every thing. cdn- firmed me in the opinion that ee: sia was ready for war. Figross- ed the Nieman-pear Wiina. * Alex- ander .sent a general to-me to as- sure me 'that he.did not wish - war. I thought his mission was - ruse to prevent Gener, tion from 'being 'intercepted. { went on with my military -preperations.' Las ---- said: "If-your majesty had made peace with Spain. and withdrawn your army from the.pen- insula you might have had from, 150;000 to 200,000 more men.' "But," replied the rin "that would haye been 200,000 more men lost. It seems that when I was at Moscow Alexander wished to treat because he was surrouhded by par- tisans of England. He was 'afraid of being strangled. I would not have declared war upon Russia but that I was persuaded that she was about to declare war upon me. well knew the difficulties to be en- countered in such a campaign.' (In Russia the war was popular, as the people chafed against: the restraint of the continental -block- Napoleon established. Gour- gaud thought that Napoleon might from the nature of his tents and preparations, have been preparing fora campaign on India if his Rus- rian campaign were successful.) ---- 2 BRITISH MANUFACTURERS. Testing Time for Which They May Be Grateful. It will be an interesting sidelight on the present crisis to note how Great Britain wil] successfully meet the situation. It will be a testing time for which probably British manufacturers will yet be grateful, says an English paper. It will show at least what they can as well as what they cannot do. For instance, those w he imagine that the pretty, inexpensive silk frocks will be no longer available will learn that both taffetas and satins and many of the prettiest of silk and woollen mix tures ¢an be made in Britain, for during the past few years the man- ufacture of these and fine woollen materials has been pushed forward to a-great extent inthe northern and midland counties of England. re coats we call "fur substitutes" are practically all British-made, and that there -- we have a very Im- portant asse Although fashion wil] not be fol- lowed with zest the fact that winter designs had already been decided upon before 'hostilities upset the calculations of British and Conti- nental fashion centres will" have some effect on the general appear- ance of our clothes. Tunics and coats are spreading, and this wall certainly be a feature of this win- ter's silhouette. The wearing of serge will be more than ever popu- lar; it is somehow in tune with the circumstances gant, yet unselfeonscious end prac- tical. --i____ KEEP ALL WOUNDS OPEN. Antiseptic logne Hospitals. An English medicai correspund- ent who has been visiting the mili- tary hospitals at Boulogne writes: is the bacteriological laboratory at tached to it. Sir Almroth Wright has recently come to Boulogne and | presides over this department. His which flourish only when removed from the atmosphere. This discov- ery has had the most important bearing upon the surgical work of the hospital, because it has demon- strated the necessity of keeping all the wounds open and allowing the air to reach them. Wounds kept well open are found to heal most satisfactory. The guidance of emin- ent consultant surgeons and also of the surgeons of the Royal Army Medical Corps itself has led to the crag of a most sorservative policy, and limbs are now saved which in less favorable circum- stances must have been lost." as nie Why Should He Pay? Once an old colored man visited a doctor and was given definite in- structions as to what he should do. ng his head, he started to cry "the office when the doctor "Here, Rastus, you forgot to pay "Pay you ier what, boss ?"' , »' replied the "Naw, euh : suh; I ain't gwine to take it," ani Rastus shuf- means dor a declaration of war and with me, ;but that he did not dare}, such as these have been Raab? rt deadly work. yed Pits, with Wire Entanglements; a Deadly Device Used by the Austrians. lurned to account on occasion in conjunction--as seen in the photograph above--with barbed-wire en depths and: at irregular intervals, and, where a number of men are available for the digging. ca: . The obstacle is ordinarily laid within as cloee range of the defenders' firing-line ax possible, t ion.and hold the assailants back, checked and '"'hung up," as it were, all the time under fire, so In the fighting in the Austrian Danube provinces and on the Serbian border, obsta CRUSH GERMANY ON THE SEA GREAT PREPARATIONS. United States Visiter to England Tells What Ie Saw in Davenport. A description of what a United States visitor saw at close range in the vast British naval plant at Devonport, England, is thus set out in the New York World: 14 Ships in Six, Months, Covert coating-is an-exeellent pro- that, is, of | Vhat is going forward at express |speed behind the walls of Britain's inavy yards, if it were known to the GREAT BRITAIN NOW MAKING présent. she is lying im one of the ns in the yard, submitting to attentions of many hundreds of irkmen, who clamber about her bulk like veritable ants. On BF wi alongside of her are repos- the massive 15.5 guns, ten of which she will carry. "Even my layman's eye could de- arrangement of her turrets, which, Tam told, is absolutely new. They are laid each somewhat like boxes in a theatre, each jutting outward fem the one ahead in such a way that she can fire all ten of her fif- teen-point-fives from the bow as well as broadside on Torpedo and Mine Proof, "The wonderful slope--flange is thetechnical word--of her bow, nar roy ut the water line and widening in sueh a way as to offer the least authorities, would dispel! Teutonic belief that { German hi the fists nova ica will be augmented by six super-dreadnoughts and eight battle cruisers from its yards' 'at Devonport Portsmouth alone. All of these ships will be equipped defensively and offensively "more powerfully than any men- -of-war: of their réspective classes now afloat. least one of the' super-dread- noughts, for example, has an ar- rangement. of turrets which is quite new and which permits big calibre guns 'to be fired broadside or straight ahead with' equal facility. No less than 9,000 men are em- ployed night and day at the Devon- port station, and there are always some 5,000 sailors and marines on guard there against attack from without or within--which latter re- fers to the very real peril of espiv- te is not generally known that the tremendous expanse recently Methods Used at Bou- | tally inehades six dry docks capa- 'A feature of the Casino Hospital | researches have already establish- ed the fact that the gangrene and septic conditions met with so fre- quently are due to micro-organisms | fled out. added to the Naval Barracks--as | the Devonport point is known offi- ble of holding the biggest battleship yet designed by the Admiralty's | draughtsmen. It's a close fit, to be sure, when a giant of the Elizabeth or ron Duke class Squeezes into one of these docks. Quite recently, the American visitor was informed, such a ship came back from the North Sea to havea 'fe w repairs made. After she was jal! in the dry dock, there was just | SIX inches to spare at either end! Siege Howitzers. At present a very large number of men are engaged aie at Devonport in turnin 13 and even 15 inch battleship guns into siege howitzers. is operation is performed by detachi the gun from its turret, cutting down its muzzle and mount- ing it on an artillery ---- of ign and great to the Royal jan 6 cae. fit of bie naval weapons the number of heavy howitzers now with British ithona: wa lara to that of the enemy's comple- Warspite a Wonder. Ray _superdreadnought Warspite, important of the men-of-war puaidine in the Devonport yard, is tus, described : Suddenly we--my officer -- sleep to stand and m --stood abiveriag. behind ide a dila- pideted looking vessel, whisk I took to be an ohaciete cruiser. My com panion briefly introduced tie ob ob- ject as His Majesty's Ses nought Warspite, of geen yee eevee Meena Pie ae as yet. The Wan spite ° will be ready Se 'action, so I learned, within six months. At ie resistance to-the seas, is of aaanor below the waterline. 'That and other features which it would be improper to revéal make her practically immune from any existing torpedo or mine. That is, she maye be badly damaged by an éxplosive below the waterline, but she cammot be sunk by one. Her fuel is oif-exclusively, no coal be- ing used aboard her except for tuli- nary purposes. "She and her sisters are real beauties, Of course the reason she looked so unassuming to' my un- practised eye was because she had not "been painted and was partly concealed beneath all sorts of scaf- bs leaves the hands of the engineers. And to think that such a vessel] can be com- pleted in eighteen months!' , Machinery and War. No other great war has depended 50 nich upon machinery as the pre- sent. Inthe opinion of the editor of the Scientific American this fact may do much to hasten the end of the struggle, through the wear o the machine rather than the ex- haustion of the man. Gun and mo- tor car are undergoing a test of en- durance such as they have never undergone before. Every time a gun is 'fired some of the interior surface with the delicate rifling is wiped away with a proportion ate loss in accuracy, and the larger the bore of the gun the greater the ero- sion. "Even more severe, ' says the Scientific American, "must be the depreciation that is going on in the motor-car transport service. The motor car is a highly-developed machine, which calls for careful up- keep to maintain it in full efficiency. In ordinary commercial service the motor car-and the automobile re- ceive, as a rule, considerable care and watchful maintenance. In the present war, however, the = vehicles must nature of things; be ateolutely bau: tal, 'aiid the n must be yery ate Whefe are the repair that can keep art with this de} © ne- ily enormous 'edatage the war be made good?' ' ----k__--_ Befogged. ~~ A London merchant received a telephone message one oe from one of his clerks: "I sorry, Mr. Wilson," said the tuple over the wire, "I can't come down to the shop this morning on ac- count of the fog; but the fact is that I have not yet arrived home yesterday." Sige The man who makes good doesn't wait for opportunity to knock. He has the door wide open: _ tect and appreciate the wonderful, :| thrown over an obstacle, meh pull upon the rope. section eleven an BARB WIRE ENTANGLEMENTS., How Soldiers Overcome These De- fensive Obstacles. As has been learned from the re- ports from the war, barb wire en- tanglements have been freely re- sorted to by both sides for protect- ing their positions, and in a general way it is known that these consist in a number of irregular lines of strong posts set solidly in the ground with a maze of lines of barbed wire strung between them; but hew these obstacles are over- come has been left for explanation to a military expert who has an interesting story to tell in the Scientific American. Some of the many schemes that have been tried are described as follows ixperiments have been made in| removing whole sections of wire at | once by means of a rake, to which} a wire rope is fastened. his is and thirty Thus a d one 'half feet the time required to pass gritos a barbed trap (the glint of the wire is usually concealed by a bank of earth) some military engineers have thought that.it is a waste of pre- cious Minutes to cut or tear it down, and that it is more rational to surmount the obstacle in some way. Structures of boards, ladders and bags should be thrown over the wire, according to their ideas, and upon the pluatform thus made the men can press forward. Boards eigst feet long, nine inches wide and three-quarters of an inch thick, are fastened together by means of three cross pieces, leaving a clear space of three inches between the boards. The weight of the double board is thirty-two pounds. and sixteen o _-- are employed, each carried by single man. To place. the sixteen double boards on the wire net re- quires about one hundred and forty seconds, as actual tests have shown, ane it takes seventeen men sixty onds to pass over the boards. As a a aues saving-expedient, therefore, the method is hardly a success over that of wire-cutting. Nor are Jadders much better. In some experiments, conducted in England ten ladders with nine rungs each were used. Each lad- der, twelve feet long and twenty- two inches wide, weighed thirty-two pounds, and was ¢arried by a sin- gle man. The ladders were laid down in one hundred and forty-five seconds, and sixty-five Seconds were required by seventeen men to pick their way from rung to rung. That this idea cf surm< munting an obstacle rather than cutting a way through it is not practicable, is bet- ter shown by the experiments which have been made with bags of cloth and wire. velve bags each eight feet long and four and one-half feet wide (measured empty) and weigh- ing forty pounds w filled with straw, were pla upon a net in ninety-five seconds, and seventeen men passed over them in forty-five seconds. When the bage are of wire pooger results are obtained. Such bags are composed of two egg of..wire meshing, eight feet ong and four and ong-half feet wide, laid on top of each other and laced together at the sides with wire. A quantity of straw three inches thick is pushed into the wire bag, which then weighs only -- It takes ninety seconds to bags on a barb- ed wire entanglement, and it takes seventeen men 6ixty-five seconds to pass over them. ----_ h____ ~ Cautious. Edwards-- Will -you dine with us this evening i are going to havea pheasant Eaton (fond of his stomach) -- And how many guests? . NOTES OF SCIENCE Dry flour ie wh newspaper will cleans Spain contains nx 000 acrés of unprodne stive | th a piece of A Fretich imventer's collapsible boat can be folded and carried with- in an ordinary suit case Pines are believed to live the longest of al! trees, some have at- tained mors eas 70) years Norway ha- 144 tree planting so- cieties which <nce 1900 have set out more than 26 A griddle hinged in the centre haé been invented that may; be turned over to bake a cal roth sides, Tests has * cy ii proper! filtered oi! ray be us iulefinite without losing its lubrmating qua ties. Two Swiss surgeons have inve) pa an easily used drug which stop ° he flow of ;; loud from wounds. al- bates ; An aifecties e "stack ric fan that is small enough to he carr in @ pocket or handbag is operated by a dry battery. A system Las developed whereby wir messages may be received in sa times, even during thunderstorms na British arsena! there las been 'installed a seale that will weigh gute up to 100 tens with a possible r of less than seven poun f ete rateot waving out- fit, including soap acid brush, is contained in a aise lees than half an inch thick for carrving in the largest Japanese ipped with 1. operate nes successfully for distanessup to 100 mi Much more ethetaat than met mirrors, and alm ab as dt irable, new English one for litary ) poses which ia made of glass which wire netting is imbedded. "Trench ty officers fia solvc the proble ra zuver des- ert sanc ' ght sda, driven by an aerial p rake fair speed a vd isi] In a is heen made for <s there v whe i ution but onee in £ ! L dial thi: FI and days For riding ~% has been -invent 1 ey hol- low, water y here rear muir being provided wit) Tlacdes for propulsion = ow Jail Courtesy. Warden--Your wife is here and wants to speak te you. Prisoner--Oh, tell her I've gone t Se First Lawyer---"What did old, Moneybags leave!' Second Law- yer--"A lot of disgusted relatives."" "John Henry aaid his wifey with stony serenity "T ealw coming out of a aslodn bhis noon. Well, * "Well, m ,' replie the obdurate John, 'you wou'dn have me stay in there all would you?' " Gentleman; to bis rustic servant --Well, Jean, did you give the Gov, ernor my nota? "'Yes, sir, I gave; it to him, but there is no use w rite; ing him lettera. He oan't see- ta read them. He's blind as a bat.' 4 cous. 1"? "Yeo, air, blind. Twice; he asked nie where my hat was, andi : tune. > | 'Blind gs a bat, sir!" Neo L had it on my head all the PrYryreeY?T?v?? puurevrre 'Te erererrrerrrrrTrrrrT TY ' ~--errrrererrrryvy,..y ll a i