A ten-mile ride southward led to the position of the Austrian 12-inch battery. The two guns this time were planted by the side of the road, screened only in front by a little wood, but exposed to view from both sides, the rear, and above. For this greater exposure the battery had paid correspondingly, several of its men having been killed or wounded by hostile fire. Here, as in the German batteries, the war work in progress went on with a machinelike regularity and absence of spectacular features more characteristic of a rolling mill than a battle. The men at the guns went through their work with the deftness and absence of confusion of high-class mechanics. The heavy shells were rolled to the guns, hoisted by a chain winch to the breech opening, and discharged in uninteresting succession, a short pause coming after each shot, until the telephonic report from the observation stand was received. The battery had been firing all day at Fort Lionville, at a range of 9,400 meters, (nearly six miles,) and the battery commander was then endeavoring to put out of action the only gun turret which still answered the fire. The task of finding this comparatively minute target, forty or fifty feet in diameter, was being followed with an accuracy which promised eventual success. The shells from the guns started on their course with characteristic minute-long shrieks. Watches were pulled out to determine just how long the shrieks could be heard, and the uninitiated were preparing to hear the sound of the explosion itself. The battery chief explained, however, that this scream was due to the conditions immediately around the muzzle of the gun, and could not be heard from other points. He invited close watch of the atmosphere a hundred yards before the gun at the next shot. Not only could the projectile be seen plainly in the beginning of its flight, but the waves of billowing air, rushing back to fill the void left by the discharge and bounding and rebounding in a tempestuous sea of gas, could be distinctly observed. This airy commotion caused the sound heard for more than a minute. *The Slaughter in Alsace* *By John H. Cox of The London Standard.* BASLE, Switzerland, Aug. 19.--I have just returned from an inspection of the scenes of the recent fighting between the French and Germans in the southern districts of Alsace. Dispatches from Paris and Berlin describe the engagements between the frontier and Muelhausen as insignificant encounters between advance guards. If this be true in a military sense, and the preliminaries of the war produce the terrible effects I have witnessed, the disastrous results of the war itself will exceed human comprehension. As a Swiss subject I was equipped with identification papers and accompanied by four of my countrymen, all on bicycles.