Story of a War Secret One of the most picturesque of all the war secrets has just been divulged. It was planned in 1918 to build three other Parises, 15 miles from the real city, on which the German airmen could drop all bombs they wanted to without injuring a soul or anything but street lamps of a primitive pattern and vast quantities of canvas and framework. These other Parises were to be true cities of light while the real city shrouded herself in convenient darkness.
The inventor of this plan wag M. Jacopozzi, an electrical engineer, and to prove the utility of it he constructed at Orme de Merlu, about 15 miles northeast of Paris, a model Gare de 1'Est complete with two kilometres of railroad track, signal sheds, trains, engines, houses and neighbouring streets. It was so completely Gare de lest that French airmen flying over it by night did not know it was not real. Its appearance betrayed nothing of its gossamer character, but all it was wag a framework of canvas and light wood, as insecure as a rustic village on the stage of the Opera Comique.
In those days Paris wag suffering nightly from the Gothas, and some. thing had to be done. It was then that Jocapozzi came along with his plan. His signa} lamps were lanterns on poles, and they were about the most real' thing in his camoufage city. The rest was translucent canvas—dummy trains laid on the ground, but as deceptive as the Trojan horse; factories that emitted steam and smoke, produced by most primitive means and made big with rays of small searchlights shining through them. His streets were SRSA "SE Pes NPP Ge ce arm, just rows of half-hidden Jamps in a desolate and uninhabited region.
All that was lacking to make the plan a complete success was that it should be bombed, and its appearance was so good that the authorities decided to make two other camouflage districts like it, one on a bend of the Seine below Pontoise where the river would help the illusion and another of light and vapour to represent an industrial district to the east of the city which the nervous German airmen, knowing that Paris ought to be somewhere about, would joyfully bomb and joyfully depart' home again, while Paris slept in peace.
Before these plang could be put into execution, the armistice came and stopped them.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.