It is true that the modern Lee-Enfield and
Mauser claim to be the most precise and deadly weapons of destruction
ever devised. But they were intended for proper, gentlemanly warfare,
with the opposing sides set out in straight lines, a convenient
distance apart. In the hand-to-hand butchery which calls itself war
to-day, the rifle is rapidly becoming _demode_. For long ranges you
require machine-guns; for short, bombs and hand-grenades. Can you
empty a cottage by firing a single rifle-shot in at the door? Can you
exterminate twenty Germans in a fortified back-parlour by a single
thrust with a bayonet? Never! But you can do both these things with a
jam-tin stuffed with dynamite and scrap-iron.
So the bomb has come to its own, and has brought with it certain
changes--tactical, organic, and domestic. To take the last first,
the bomb-officer, hitherto a despised underling, popularly (but
maliciously) reputed to have been appointed to his present post
through inability to handle a platoon, has suddenly attained a
position of dazzling eminence. From being a mere super, he has become
a star. In fact, he threatens to dispute the pre-eminence of that
other regimental parvenu, the Machine-Gun Officer. He is now the
confidant of Colonels, and consorts upon terms of easy familiarity
with Brigade Majors. He holds himself coldly aloof from the rest of
us, brooding over the greatness of his responsibilities; and when he
speaks, it is to refer darkly to "detonators," and "primers,"
and "time-fuses.
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