BARBED WIRE ENTANGLE MENTS. Protection placed in front of a military position to check an enemy as sault. In the World War these were used to an unprecedented extent, owing from about 140 to 1,550 miles; comprising Morocco, Fez, Algeria, Tunis, and Tri poli (including Barca and Fezzan). The principal races are the Berbers, the original inhabitants„ from whom the country takes its name; the Arabs, who conquered an extensive portion of it during the times of the caliphs; the Bedouins, Jews, Turks, negroes, and the French colonists of Algeria, etc. The country, which was prosperous under the Carthaginians, was, next to Egypt, the richest of the Roman provinces, and the Italian states enriched themselves by their intercourse with it. In the 15th century, however, it became infested with adventurers who made the name of Bar bary corsair a terror to commerce, a con dition of things finally removed by the French occupation of Algeria. In the early part of the 19th century the United States Government found itself forced as a result of the attitude of some of the Barbary countries to make war against them.
to the prevalence of trench warfare.
Great ingenuity was displayed in making these as impregnable as possible. Often they were wound around posts or stakes, projecting at an angle so as to form an abatis. At other times they were wound from bush to bush and tree to tree, every natural obstacle being availed of to strengthen the defense. Before an assault upon a trench thus defended could be made with any chance of suc cess, an intensive and long continued ar tillery fire was necessary to cut lanes through the wires for the passage of the assaulting troops. Sometimes electric currents were run through the wires by the defenders, as a further strengthening of their position. The situation was not met until the invention of the tanks. These great monsters could not be de terred from crushing their way through the entanglements, while the attacking troops followed in their wake. After the Somme battle, where the tanks first demonstrated their value, they were al ways put in the van of the drive pro jected by the Allies, and entanglements, however strong, could not succeed in stopping them.