lessly with a noise like a small
firecracker, and finally, when they have become sufficiently expert,
with the real Mills bomb, which scatters destruction in a burst of
noise and flame. To attain accuracy and distance in throwing these
destructive little ovals is by no means as easy as it sounds. The
bombing-school at Etaples will not soon forget the American baseball
player who threw a bomb seventy yards. The hand-grenade is the
unsafest and most treacherous of all weapons and even in practice
accidents and near-accidents frequently occur. The Mills bomb, which
has a scored surface to prevent slipping, is about the shape and size
of a large lemon. Protruding from one end is the small metal ring of
the firing-pin. Three seconds after this is pulled out the bomb
explodes--and the farther the thrower can remove himself from the bomb
in that time the better. Now, in line with the policy of strict
economy which has been adopted by the British military authorities,
the men receiving instruction at the bombing-schools were told not to
throw away the firing-pins, but to put them in their pockets, to be
turned in and used over again. The day after this order went into
effect a company of newly arrived recruits were being put through
their bomb-throwing tests. Man after man walked up to the protecting
earthwork, jerked loose the firing-pin, hurled the bomb, and put the
firing-pin in his pocket. At last it came the turn of a youngster who
was obviously overcome with stage fright. To the horror of his
comrades, he threw the firing-pin and put the live bomb in his pocket!
In three seconds that bomb was due to explode, but the instructor,
who had seen what had happened, made a flying leap to the befuddled
man, thrust his hand into his pocket, drew out the bomb, and hurled
it. It exploded in the air.

Near Etaples, at Paris Plage, is the largest of the British
machine-gun schools. Here the men are taught the operation not only of
all the models of machine-guns used by the Allies, but they are also
shown how to handle any which they may capture from the Germans. Set
up on the beach were a dozen different models, beginning with a
wonderfully ingenious weapon, as beautifully constructed as a watch,
which had just been brought in from a captured German airplane and of
which the British officers were loud in their admiration, and ending
with the little twenty-five-pound gun invented by Colonel Lewis, an
American. Standing on the sands, a