ts for enemy riflemen and snipers and the casualties
among machine gunners ran far above the average for other troops. It
was this that caused the Emma Gee sections to be named Suicide Clubs.

Now, however, the Lewis gun, being light and inconspicuous, can be
carried by advancing troops and used effectively in the attack without
its operators suffering excessively, and at the same time it has been
demonstrated that the true machine gun, of the heavier type, mounted
on its firm base, can effectively cooperate with the artillery in
maintaining protective or other barrages and in delivering harassing
fire upon the enemy at points behind his front line. As this fire is,
necessarily, over the heads of our own troops, sometimes but a few
feet over them, it must be extremely accurate and dependable and it
has been proved that guns of the lighter, automatic-rifle type, can
not be safely used for this purpose, even when mounted on the heavy
tripods of the other guns. This is probably due to the excessive
vibration of the lighter barrels.

For the benefit of any who are not familiar with the word, I might
say, in passing, that "_barrage_" is a French word meaning a "barrier"
or a "dam" and when used in a military sense it means a veritable
barrier or wall of fire, where the shells or bullets, or both, are
falling so thickly as to make it impossible for any body of troops to
go through without suffering great loss.

I know nothing of the Browning gun, as it is a new invention and has
never been used in the field. We can only hope that it will prove as
good as the Vickers and Lewis which are giving perfect satisfaction on
the battle-fields of Flanders and France. No real machine gunner
expects or requires anything better, but I can not imagine any _one_
type of gun that can replace both of them, any more than a single
class of artillery can combine the functions of both the light field
guns and the heavy howitzers.

The Germans evidently had good spies within our lines as they always
knew when we changed over; that is, when we took over a new line. At
first they would call out: "Hello, Canadians, how are you," sometimes
even naming the battalion. Later on, however, they used much stronger
language but they knew who we were, just the same. Their methods of
communicating information from our lines were many and very ingenious.
For instance, at one time it was learned by our intelligence
department that spies were making use of th