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Show THE LEWIS GUN. Secretary Baker has added bis condemnation con-demnation of the Lewis machine gun an American invention to that of the ordnance department of the army. Despite De-spite the fact that the gun has been found so valuable, by the English that they rate it above any other machine gun of its general type, the war department depart-ment officially declares it to be inferior. in-ferior. The secretary's statement that he ! has found nothing of record to show j that the , gun ever was offered to our 1 government is immaterial. The ord-j ord-j nance department of the army should j have familiarized itself with all guns on the market. So far as we recall,! the Lewis gun was not first offered to ' the British government, but to our own j government. It may not nave been a ! formal offer, but the gun was an Ameri- j can invention and apparently was open i for purchase long before it was accept-1 ed by the British. There has been a want of frankness in all that has concerned the rejection or ignoring of the Lewis machine gun. The machine guns we are using in the army today are not rated superior to the guns used in European armies. We have heard it stated repeatedly we know not with what truth that our machine guns are obsolete. At all events, Americans will have a lively recollection recollec-tion of what occurred the night the Villa band attacked Columbus, N. M. The Americans had one machine gun ready for use. It was hurried to the railroad track and placed in an excellent excel-lent position to enfilade the bandits as they retreated from the town toward the border. As the bandits swept across the tracks the machine gun opened fire and then immediately "jammed." It may be that the Lewis gun, which is only a few years old, is even now out of date and that the ordnance department depart-ment has better guns in view. If so, that in itself does not absolve the ordnance ord-nance department from error in overlooking over-looking the merits of a good gun. 1 |