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Show Ir Additional War News IV PAR-IS, March 24. The comments com-ments of the French press this morning were about evenly divided divid-ed between the big gun which is bombarding the city from back of the German lines and the- terrific battle raging on the British front, i The tone of ttoe comment on the bombardment is one of astonishment astonish-ment at the feasibility of the performance, per-formance, while as to the battle, the favorable ending of it is con-I con-I fidently expected. ! The newspapers do not conceal their' admiration for the mechani-, mechani-, cal feat of the Germans in constructing con-structing their new weapon, but ! speak passionately of the useless i barbarity of the bombardment. The Matin says it is consoling ' i to note that the number of vie- stims is small, but it asks for re- -i i 'i : I'pnsais on uerman uilius. Professor Paul Painlevc, former form-er premier and president of the Acadomy of Sciences, told the Ex- I celsior that by using tungsten in I the fabrication of the projectiles, I the tungsten shells would be of ( about half the diameter of steel I shells of an even weight and that I therefore the atmospheric resist- j ancc would be less, this accomit- ! ing for the extremely long range. 1 He also touched upon the possi- 1 bility of a propellor attached to j the projectile. Alfred Capus in the Figaro, alludes al-ludes to the making'of the gun as a great mechanical feat, but points out that as a military factor the weapon is entirely inefficacious. The Petit Parisien comments upon up-on the bombardment as an extremely ex-tremely minor incident as com- I pared with the gigantic battle in progress on the British front. Lie Petit Journal saj's Jules "Verne had foreseen this gun and it declares moreover that it is a French invention. "More than a year ago," it adds, "we discovered discov-ered the secret of firing our cannon can-non more than 100 kilometers. The secret lies in the greater suppression sup-pression of the atmospheric resistance." re-sistance." The Echo de Paris declares the bombardment is designed to give j the impression that Paris is within with-in the range of the German guns. i "It is a political cannon' the newspaper says. Premier Clemenceau's newspaper, newspa-per, L 'Homme Libre, says the password of the soldier is confidence. confi-dence. "Germany," it declares, i "'has wished to make it a com- plete offensive on all fronts the land, water and air fronts, as well as the 'front of the rear.' We arc facing an enemy who wishes to end 1 it as soon as possible. That suits us. Every shell that falls into ', Paris drives deeper into us the ' confidence in an ultimate vic-! vic-! tory." rr morning. The alarm was sounded immediately. .Many people took shelter, but larger numbers appeared in the streets on the way to the churches which were almost as crowded as usual, the women who sell palm leaves doing their customary thriving business. The shells arrived at regular intervals in-tervals of twentj' minutes at first. The detonations seemed louder, amid the ordinal Sunday calm, than yesterday, but they seemed to have lost their power to disturb the population which refused to be distracted from their Sunday habits to any extent. Because of the absence of means of transportation a great man' persons were seen on the streets leading to the center of the mf.V wnllrino' In l.-rrr -fliniv nn pointments. ' The rapidity of the fire increased increas-ed after the first few shells landed, land-ed, explosions following each other every fifteen minutes on the average. aver-age. Some shots came after an interval in-terval of only twelve minutes. |
