The Horrors of War
The opening scenes show the bombardment of a Turkish town by the Russian fleet in the Black Sea. This view was taken from the deck of a Russian battleship and the details of loading the huge guns, firing them, and watching the results of their deadly accuracy are all horribly apparent. A whole town bursts into flames, and a new target is sought. A steamer is sighted in the distance making hurriedly for port, and at once it becomes the mark of broadside after broadside of volleys. The first shots tear up the water about the ship and the next instant the vessel is slapped as by a vindictive Triton, a cloud of smoke; she lists grotesquely, shivers and splinters as a few more shells find their mark and then settles sickening, head first to her final port. Another scene shows a narrow mountain pass walled on one side by unscalable cliffs and sheering off on the other into a gaping precipice piled high with the dead of a whole Turkish force which, unable to advance or retreat was cut to pieces by withering artillery fire. A touching scene is one where a mother and daughter of a dead soldier mourn beside his freshly turned grave. The deadly French 75-centimeter gun in action, a giant steel bridge wrecked to prevent the advance of the enemy's troops, the throwing of hand grenades over the short distance that separates the French from the German trenches, a barbed wire entanglement designed to tear to pieces the advancing enemy, a single war missile powerful enough to kill a regiment, a horse hurled by a shell explosion high into a tree-top, the new French aeroplane gun in action trying to bring down an enemy aviator, and the decoration of those who gave their eyes as toll to Mars, are but a few of the vivid scenes that make up this film.
Cast
