Furthermore, the German artillery lacks and has lacked for a very long
time munitions. It has been obliged to reduce its consumption of shells
in a notable degree. No doubt is possible in this respect. The
statements of prisoners since the battle of the Marne, and still more
since the battle of the Yser, make it clear that the number of shots
allowed to the batteries for each action is strictly limited. We have
found on officers killed or taken prisoner the actual orders prescribing
positively a strict economy of munitions.
For the last three months, too, we notice that the quality of the
projectiles is mediocre. Many of them do not burst. On Jan. 7, in the
course of a bombardment of Laventie, scarcely any of the German shells
burst. The proportion of non-bursts was estimated at two-fifths by the
British on Dec. 14, two-thirds by ourselves in the same month. On Jan. 3
at Bourg-et-Comin, and at other places since then, shrapnel fell the
explosion of which scarcely broke the envelope and the bullets were
projected without any force. About the same time our Fourteenth Army
Corps was fired at with shrapnel loaded with fragments of glass, and on
several points of our front shell casings of very bad quality have been
found, denoting hasty manufacture and the use of materials taken at
hazard.
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