Evening Republican, Volume 20, Number 129, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 30 May 1916 — SCARECROW FOR ZEPPELINS [ARTICLE]

SCARECROW FOR ZEPPELINS

British Have Dummy Gun on Coast to Yerrify Raiders —Bit of Ancient Strategy. w,, - . London.—Sir William Gelder’s revelations as to the use of a dummy wooden gun in a Zeppelin menaced east coast town have been much discussed in London. This gun, which "was duly guarded by soldiers, was intended to terrify the Germans. For a similar piece of strategy we must go back to the Franco-British expedition to China in 1860. A French historian tells us that when the allied forces arrived at Pehtang they saw before them two small forts. Not a soldier was visible in or near them. Day 'was declining and the allies, though fearing an ambush, decided to venture into the forts. They found on the ramparts two or three wooden gunß encircled with iron, and these had been abandoned by the defenders. A few mines of primitive construction had been laid around them, and w*ere removed by the French engineers.

Dummy guns, as Macaulay shows us, must have been employed by the forces of Surajah Dowlah in the battle of Plassey. The Nabob had with him 40,000 infantry armed with firelocks, pikes, swords, bows and arrows. "They were accompanied by fifty pieces of ordnanfce of the largest size, each tugged by a long team of white oxen, and each pushed on from behind by an elephant.” In the cannonade the artillery of the Nabob, though assisted by a .few small French guns, .“did scarcely any execution.” Gun* 1 oxen and baggage remained in U* power of the conqueror*.