IR

F it had not been what it was, a bright moonlit night, I don't think I should have recognized Venice in war time. The train, with its carriage windows closely curtained, (for you must not look out on the country when you are passing through the war zone,) crept like a spectre over the bridge spanning the lagoon into Venice. Soldiers were 'sleeping in the darkened station awaiting their trains to the front. The two or three passengers who looked like tourists had to run the gauntlet at the barrier of a dozen gilt-braided porters, each anxious to impress upon you that his hotel was still open.

If it were not that they followed you clamoring outside the station you might think you had stepped out into a city of the dead. There was not a gondola in sight in the first bend of the Grand Canal-indeed, I found out afterward that no gondolas are allowed to be on the canals after 8 o'clock, except the privileged hotel omnibus gondolas, which meet the night train for the convenience of passengers. As you were paddled silently over the water until you came in sight of the Rialto Bridge, where the gondolier who knows his Venice will take you a short cut through narrow canals to the landing near the Place St. Mark, you were conscious of passing through a curious Venice, which, if it had not been that the moon lighted it up as bright as day, would have been a weird Venice. As it was, it was more natural to take an interest in what you missed than in what you saw.

The banished gondola! The old-time conveyance of conspirators against the republic, painted black so that it should be able to creep unseen through darkened waterways-just as tonight you could have imagined Venice three or four centuries ago if it were not for that spoil-sport moon. The gondola was the black steed of revolutionaries; it is re

tained as the black steed of Venetians up to the present time as a reminder of the intrigues its invisibility favored in the Middle Ages. Hotel keepers have put a few gaudily painted ones on the canals as advertisements, and my old friend Don Carlos used to send a bright yellow gondola to the station to take me to the Loredan Palace when I occasionally visited him in exile at Venice.

All light and electric power is cut off from 8 o'clock at night until 4 o'clock the next morning. Where a gleam of light did peep through the shuttered windows overlocking the canal it was the dim ray of a candle or an oil lamp. If you don't dine before 8 you cannot have the benefit of the electric fan to keep you cool and blow mosquitos down into your soup.

When you set foot on the Piazzetta and pass behind the two columns with St. Theodore still standing on the crocodile and the Winged Lion of St. Mark still engrossed in the Book, you see in the corner just where St. Mark's forms an angle with the Doge's palace two tiny dim lights. They are in a pillared exterior gallery of the cathedral, and even if they were not such feeble glimmers being hidden away at the back of the gallery they would never attract the attention of an areoplanist. These two lights have burned nightly in Venice for centuries.

The legend is that in the time of the republic a murder was committed in Venice for which a little baker boy was convicted and executed. Afterward it was proved that he was innocent, and as it was a crime which had impressed the Venetians of the period, the citizens were horrified at the terrible blunder, and to warn juries to be more careful in the future they furnished the money to provide heralds to enter the Venetian Assize Courts whose duty it was to ring out a trumpet call before the jury retired to consider a capital crime, and proclaim the

words," Remember the little baker boy!" That Venetians should be reminded for ever of this miscarriage of justice it was ordained that these two lamps should be lighted every night over the Piazzetta. The death penalty, except for military offenses, has long been abolished in Italy, so the heralds' task has fallen into abeyance; but the twin lamps are always there, though it is doubtful if one Venetian in a thousand knows why their dim glimmer relieves the darkness of this untenanted gallery.

Daylight reveals a quite unfamiliar façade of St. Mark's. The four famous bronze horses, brought to Venice by Doge Dandolo in 1204, have been removed from above the portals, where they have stood for nearly a century-since Dec. 13, 1815, to be exact. This time they are simply hidden away and not taken into captivity, as when Napoleon carried them off to Paris to decorate the arch in the Place du Carrousal. They came back to Venice then, thanks to that conqueror's good-will, and they will come back again this time. A Venetian managed to snapshot one of them as it was being swung down by a derrick, and some of his fellow-citizens are the proud possessors of a picture post card of the scene inscribed "Off to the front."

The left doorway as you enter the cathedral is blocked right up to the top with sandbags to protect mosaics which, even if they were only peppered by the bullets of a bomb exploding in the Place St. Mark, would be ruined forever. From this it is apparent that the mosaics over the centre and right portals are not so

precious. Inside the scene is strange. All the statues are padded and shrouded in canvas. The votary chapels are hidden behind sandbags, which protect their ornate altars. One solitary figure of Christ is raised in the centre of the church, around which worshippers kneel. There are heaps of sand piled around the pillars-whether to protect their bases or for use in case an incendiary bomb sets fire to the cathedral I did not ascertain.

The Doge's palace is safeguarded in a different way. The destruction of one of the pillars supporting the arches around it might bring about the collapse of those world-famed walls above the Piazzetta. So engineers have bricked in all the archways in order that, if an accident happens and a column is blown away, the weight of the walls will rest on the brick buttresses. In other ways the outward aspect of Venice has been changed. The mention of these will reassure lovers of art and antiquity that the Italians are not blind to air risks.

The people have taken the aeroplane raids very calmly. Very few personal injuries have been caused, and some Venetians will tell you that they were inconvenienced more by the loss of their breakfast milk on the occasion of the last visitation than by anything else. Venice receives its meat, vegetables, and milk in barges from the mainland. enterprising aviator who dropped darts on the city instead of bombs made a dead set on the milk barge with such success that he punctured enough large milk cans to cause the supply to run short that morning.

An

Writing recently to The London Times on the proposal that the British troops be equipped with armor, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle said:

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UCH actions as that of May 9, where several brigades lost nearly half their numbers in endeav

oring to rush over the 300 yards which separated us from the German trenches, must make it clear that it is absolutely impossible for unprotected troops to pass over a zone which is swept by machine guns. Therefore you must

either forever abandon such attacks or you must find artificial protection for the men.

It has always seemed to me extraordinary that the innumerable cases where Bible, cigarette case, watch, or some other chance article has saved a man's life have not set us scheming so as to do systematically what has so often been the result of a happy chance.

Your correspondents have mentioned the objection that any protection may itself be broken and that splinters of it may aggravate the wound. One answer to that would be to arm only those points where a wound would in any case be mortal. These points are really very few, and no great weight of metal would be needed to protect them.

Sir Arthur suggests that each ́ man should wear, first, a helmet; secondly, a curved plate of highly tempered steel not more than a foot in diameter over the heart, and, thirdly, a similar plate coving the abdomen. He adds:

With these three precautions the death rate should be greatly reduced from rifle and machine gun fire, as also from shrapnel. Nothing, of course, will avail against a direct shell burst, but, granting that, individual life would be saved.

This does not bear upon the capture of a position, since so many would fall wounded that the weight of attack would be spent before the stormers reached

the trenches. For this armor which will give complete protection is needed, and, since the weight of this is more than a man can readily carry, it must be pushed in front upon wheels.

I picture a great number of plates held together like the shields of a Roman tortoise, and pushed by men who crouch behind them. Others are fixed sideways upon their wheels, and are used upon the flank of the advance to prevent an enfilading fire. There is not one tortoise which would attract the concentrated fire of artillery, but each company or platoon forms its own. These numerous armor-plated bodies rush with small loss over the space which has already been cleared as far as possible of obstacles, and so have some chance of reaching the enemy's line, not as an exhausted fragment, but as a vigorous storming party, with numbers intact.

ARMOR IN THE TRENCHES.

Sir Arthur's suggestion was preceded by the following article printed in The London Times:

One of the most remarkable features of this war has been the return which has been made in various directions to older, if not to ancient, methods. The steel fort has been discredited and the earthwork justified; the strength and direction of the wind has become a leading factor once again, as it was in the days of bows and arrows, since aeroplanes are affected by the wind and gas attacks determined by it; hand grenades and bombs have assumed real importance. Finally, the question of armor for the fighting man himself has come up for consideration.

It was inevitable that this question should arise, and the astonishing thing is that discussion of it in this country has been so long postponed. Early in the war visitors to the Belgian front saw a form of shield which was used

by the soldiers. This shield was fixed in the ground when in use and the man lay behind it and was protected by it. It was employed by cavalry and, it is understood, answered the purpose for which it was intended.

The idea grew in popularity on the Continent; in a shop window in Calais a breastplate was exposed for sale many months ago for which it was claimed that it would turn aside bullets and pieces of shrapnel. A shield of this kind was tested very carefully by a group of private inventors and was finally submitted to the authorities of several of the nations at war. During the private tests a revolver was emptied at the shield while it was being worn. The shield was also subjected to rifle fire with, on the whole, good results. The results were certainly so good as to merit more extended trial.

In The Times of Oct. 28, 1914, there appeared a message from Reuter's correspondent in Paris to the following effect:

A Rennes newspaper says that the shield which has been placed at the disposal of the French infantry in Argonne is a protection against bullets which has already been adopted by the Russian Government, and of which the French Government is at present having a large number made by the works at St. Hilairedu-Harcourt, which have the monopoly of the shield. Work is proceeding actively at the factory.

Since that date references to the use of armor have appeared from time to time in medical communications from the front, and almost invariably these references have been of a favorable character. The high velocity of modern bullets causes them to ricochet from the shells, while pieces of shrapnel, which often inflict large surface wounds, are turned away, or at any rate have the force of the impact broken. Metal shields for the back and legs have from time to time been mentioned in connection with trench warfare, it being in these regions that soldiers are frequently hit by exploding shrapnel shells.

The latest contribution to the armor question is of an exceedingly interesting character, because it deals with the results secured by the use of this protection. Dr. Devraigne, says The Lancet, has now systematically studied the value of headpieces of metal issued some time ago to the French troops in the trenches. He has found the value of these calottes métalliques to be considerable. He examined 55 cases of head injury, in which 42 of the wounded men had no headpiece and 13 wore helmets.

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Of the 42, 23 suffered fracture of the skull, and most of these died. The remaining 19 had scalp wounds only. In the case of the 13 armored men, eight were suffering from cerebral shock of a more or less severe character, but none of them died, while the remaining five had merely slight superficial wounds or scratches.

Other soldiers who wore helmets had received no visible head wounds at all. The Lancet comments:

These figures do not, of course, prove that the calotte is an absolute safeguard against fractures of the skull by bullet wound or shell wound in the trenches, but, as a matter of fact, in the series of cases studied there was not a single fracture of the skull among the protected men, and Dr. Devraigne concludes that the value of the metallic headpiece has been absolutely demonstrated and that it should be much more generally employed.

That this conclusion is a sound one seems to be fairly obvous. The objection to the use of armor has been to a large extent founded upon the fact that it was heavy and difficult to make; but modern conditions of warfare have discounted the question of weight to a great extent. Any one who has visited our British hospitals knows that head wounds are very frequent indeed. We should certainly reduce the incidence of these wounds if we followed the example of our allies and gave our men helmets similar to those served out to the French soldiers. We have already had eight months in which to consider the question.

TH

HE present hour, when the above subjects are being discussed on all hands, is peculiarly a time when the people of Britain should make up their minds on the great question of voluntaryism and compulsion.

The magnificent response to the call for defense of the motherland-response not only of our home peoples, but of our colonies and dependencies all over the world-has surprised ourselves. It has astonished Germany, and brought to our allies an unexpected satisfaction-since they, indeed, looked to our navy for help, but never supposed a Continental army of any magnitude would be forthcoming. I say "defense of the motherland," for it is clear, I think-whatever various theories may be held about the origins of the war-that the idea of defense, not of offense, has been the great deciding urge and inspiration of the enthusiasm.

France, curiously, seems to be not quite satisfied, and to be of opinion that Britain is not bearing her full share of the brunt of this contest; and even M. Romain Rolland, in a late letter to me, while protesting against the war, takes the view that if the other allied nations have conscription it is not quite fair of us not to adopt it also. But this opinion, I think, we can trace to the sinister influence of the Northcliffe paper in Paris. We cannot regard it as justified. Britain may, as usual, have been rather slow in making up her mind, but that she is putting all her forces and all her resolution into the work now cannot be doubted.

In the face of this great object lesson in the value and power of the voluntary principle when the heart of a nation is

once roused, it is more than probable that the outcry in favor of conscription which we are hearing in some quarters is really an anti-democratic political move, having in view the scotching of the rising power of the masses.

For the arguments against conscription (as regards our country, at any rate) are really so strong that for every sincere person they must, one would think, be convincing.

In the first place, it is contrary to the genius of our people, who, though slow and deficient in capacity of rapid organization, are very persistent in the determination to grow, as it were, out of their own roots, and in the dislike of being pushed into things against their will.

In the second place, it is intolerable to our sense of freedom, and it ought to be intolerable to our Christian sentiment, to be compelled to fight. For while service of some kind to the State might reasonably be regarded as compulsory, organized and professional murder is so revolting to the feelings, the consciences, and the temperaments of some people that to force them into it would seem the height of wickedness. It would also be the height of folly, for nothing is more certain than that a number of such people compulsorily enrolled in a force do sericusly lower the general standard of courage, efficiency, and determination in that force.

Thirdly, at the present juncture, when the voluntary response has had such great material result, and exercised so fine a moral influence, by showing forth the heart of the nation, and what can be done by the principle of freedom-to