It is the inability of gun to see gun, and even when seen to knock out gun, which has put an end to the so-called artillery duel of pitched-battle days, when cannon walloped cannon to keep cannon from walloping the infantry. Now when there is an action, though guns still go after guns if they know where they are, most of the firing is done against trenches and to support trenches and infantry works, or with a view to demoralising the infantry. Concentration of artillery fire will demolish an enemy’s trench and let your infantry take possession of the wreckage remaining; but then the enemy’s artillery concentrates on your infantry and frequently makes their new habitation untenable. Noiselessly except for a little click, with chickens clucking in a field near by, the big breech-block which held the shell fast, sending all the power of the explosion out of the muzzle, was swung back and one looked through the shining tube of steel, with its rifling which caught the driving band and gave the shell its rotation and accuracy in its long journey, which would close when, descending at the end of its parabola, its nose struck brick or earth or pavement and it exploded. Wheels that lift and depress and swing the muzzle, and gadgets with figures on them, and other scales which play between the map and the gadgets, and atmospheric pressure and wind variation, all worked out with the same precision under a French hedge as on board a battleship where the gun-mounting is fast to massive ribs of steel--it seemed a matter of bookkeeping and trigonometry rather than war. If a shell from this gun were to hit at the corner of Wall Street and Broadway at the noon hour, it would probably kill and wound a hundred men. If it went into the dugout of a support trench it would get everybody there; but if it went ten yards beyond the trench into the open field it would probably get nobody. “Cover!” some one exclaimed, while we were looking at the gun; and everybody promptly got under the branches of a tree or a shed. A German aeroplane was cruising in our direction. If the aviator saw a group of men standing about, he might draw conclusions and pass the wireless word to send in some shells at whatever number on the German gunners’ map was ours.