Wounded men, wrapped in blankets, are often sent a mile or so by teleferica, and sometimes — thanks to the slender cable the prompt operation which will save a man's life can be performed within an hour after he has been wounded.

Perhaps not exactly "methods of warfare," but certainly of great assistance in warfare, are mules and horses, homing pigeons, and dogs. Motors do not fill the place of horses and mules by any means. It is estimated that, entirely aside from the requirements of the cavalry, one horse is needed to every four men. The horse will go over ground too rough for the motor, and even over ditches and through ploughed fields where a motor would flounder helplessly. The motor car can usually carry supplies of food and ammunition to within five miles of the fighting line, but the horse or mule must do the rest.

Homing pigeons are the best carriers of messages in the employ of the army. Pigeon lofts, looking like lunch carts, are drawn up behind the lines, and from there the birds are taken to the men who are to form scouting or attacking parties. Patrol boats and Uboats carry pigeons, aviators send them home with messages written on thin paper and fastened in a capsule to one of their legs. The pigeon never loses his sense of direction. Even if he is set free in the midst of a heavy barrage fire, he flies up as fearlessly as if he knew what an impossible mark he is for an enemy's gun, circles around once to get his bearings, and then starts for his own loft at astounding speed. Pigeons can fly sixty miles an hour and have been

known to make eight hundred miles on a single flight. At one of our camps a message of moderate length was started at the same moment by dog, wireless, and pigeon, to a distant place. The pigeonborne message arrived in two and one half minutes. Even the wireless lagged behind, for it took longer than that to relay the message and deliver it.

The work of the dog is exceedingly valuable and greatly varied. For drawing carts the Belgians have long used a cross between the Great Dane and the mastiff, such a dog as is the hero of Ouida's story, A Dog of Flanders. He now draws light guns, and with dogs of other breeds has been taught to search out wounded men, running back with a cap, a button gnawed from their clothing, or, as trained in some armies, carrying in his mouth a loose strap left hanging from his collar and thus showing that he has found some one in need. Dogs have been brought from Alaska to drag supplies and ammunition on narrow-gauge tracks laid over the Vosges Mountains. They also carry food and hot coffee to the men in the first trenches when the firing is protracted. They carry messages to the firing-line when communication has been in any manner cut off. They accompany sentinels and patrols and keep close beside listening-posts, ready to indicate the direction of the danger by "pointing." They help kill the rats in the trenches; and not the least of their services is acting as pets for the soldiers. They wear gas-masks like "other folk," though they were at first greatly mortified at appearing in public in

such a costume; and if they are wounded, they are carried to hospitals and are cared for by skillful specialists. Like other folk, too, they receive badges of honor. More than one dog has got a message through, thus saving a whole battalion or system of trenches, and has received from France the highest decoration for bravery that the country can give.

England has a veterinary corps attached to every brigade. A horse that is injured hopelessly is put out of his suffering by a prompt and merciful death. One that can be saved is carried in a horse ambulance to the hospital and given water, food, and a bed of straw. If the horse is sleepy, he is first allowed to rest as long as he likes, for the veterinaries know well that sleep is his best medicine. Then he is washed, and his wounds dressed. Even after he recovers, if he needs rest he is sent to pasture for a while before returning to the front. Thousands of horses that would have died in lingering agony on the battle-field are saved by this treatment; and whenever a horse "over there" is saved, the need of sending one from "over here" is prevented. England soon found her regular corps insufficient, and appealed to the Royal Humane Society for help. The Blue Star, as the animal relief society is called in France, has twelve or more base hospitals and a number of first-aid hospitals, but very many more are needed. The American Humane Association, at the request of the Secretary of War, is doing the same kind of work under the name of the Red Star.

Dogs and horses are just as lonesome and nervous

and homesick as people. In war they are just as much exposed to danger as are the men, and they suffer just as much from liquid fire burns, from gas, shrapnel wounds, and shell shock. Well deserved is the noble prayer of the Russians, "for the innocent beasts who, together with us, have borne the danger and burden of the day."

V

THE TROUBLES OF NEUTRALS

THE old pictures of warfare with troops drawn up in opposing lines, graceful clouds of smoke rising here and there, and picturesque "tented fields" in the distance are quite out of date. In these days the men are hidden in trenches, often only two or three hundred yards apart, sometimes even less, but invisible to their opponents. Some of Kitchener's men did not see a German for weeks, even though they kept close watch with their field-glasses and peri

scopes.

Something was going on, however, most of the time. Shells were tearing great holes in the trenches, rifles were cracking, and when the shrapnel, or shells full of bullets, came, "It was just like trying to dodge raindrops in a shower," said one Tommy. At night things happened. Men slipped out in the darkness over "No Man's Land,” a wild, shell-torn area between the lines which has been described as “all holes tied together." There they mended the barbed-wire tangles; they cut grass and weeds lest these should protect some patrol of the enemy; they brought up food and ammunition from the wagons back of the lines; and they always had trenches to repair after the usual bomb-throwing. There were "listening parties," who stole out in front of the enemy's trenches to learn if possible what was going