A. Russell Bond

“ Despite the perfection of the submarine the sea is still a great mystery to us. We know only its surface and its shallows. We have sounded a few deep holes and brought up samples of deep-sea life, but we have not been able to penetrate in person its profound depths and explore with our eyes and hands the world that is buried beneath its waves. Three quarters of the globe is covered by water and if we are to claim complete mastery of the earth we must find some way of descending into the heart of the ocean and exploring its deepest valleys. ”

“ Man’s ambition to make over the face of the earth to his own liking dates far back of the present age of machinery. However, the work of the ancient engineer was accomplished only at the expense of decades and generations of hard manual labor. To-day, with powerful and gigantic machinery to do our bidding, we do not hesitate to change the course of rivers, to level off the hills, to carve highways through the mountains and pierce them with tunnels, to bore into their depths for treasure and drive deep holes into the bowels of the earth in quest of liquid fuel. ”

“ We can imagine the horror of plunging hurriedly into the depths of the sea, and rushing along blindly under the surface, dodging this way and that, while terrific explosions of depth bombs stagger the submarine and threaten to crush it, and there is the constant expectation that the next explosion will tear the thin shell of the U-boat and let in the black hungry water. ”

“ The twentieth century finds this planet again stocked with monsters larger and more powerful than the gigantic saurians that dominated the earth in the Jurassic and Cretaceous epochs, but our mighty fire-breathing, steel-sinewed beasts are humbly subservient to the will of man.
The spectacle of a large steam shovel at work makes one feel at once very small and very big. Before the work of this monster the human shoveler shrinks to the proportions of a mere insect. ”

“ At twenty-four miles, or the top of the curve described by the shell of the German long-range guns, there must be an almost complete vacuum.
If only we could accompany a shell on its course, we should find a strange condition of affairs. The higher we rose, the darker would the heavens become, until the sun would shine like a fiery ball in a black sky. All around, the stars would twinkle, and below would be the glare of light reflected from the earth's surface and its atmosphere, while the cold would be far more intense than anything suffered on earth. ”

“ But, of course, we didn’t all have an uncle like Bill did. Bill’s Uncle Ed was one of those rare men who take a great interest in boys and their affairs, a man who took time to answer every question put to him, explaining everything completely and yet so clearly that you caught on at once. Uncle Ed (we all called him that) was a civil engineer of very high standing in his profession, which had taken him pretty much all over 18 the world, and his naturally inquisitive nature, coupled with a wonderful memory, had made him a veritable walking encyclopedia. ”

“ So terrible has modern war become that with each great conflict it has seemed as if its very dreadfulness would stay the hand of the invader and make him hesitate to expose his men to the horrible monsters which science and invention have created. ”

“ All boys are nature lovers. Nothing appeals to them more than a summer vacation in the woods where they can escape from the restraints of civilization and live a life of freedom. Now, it may appear to be a bit of presumption to attempt to advise the boy camper how to spend his time. Surely the novelty of outdoor life, the fascinating charm of his surroundings, will provide him plenty of entertainment.
But, after all, a camp generally affords but two major amusements, hunting and fishing. ”

“ The Germans wished to pick out a time when the breeze was blowing steadily—not so fast as to scatter the gas, but yet so fast that it would overtake men who attempted to run away from it. It was not until April 22 that conditions were ideal, and then the new mode of warfare was launched.
Just as had been expected, the Turcos were awe-struck when they saw, coming out of the German trenches, volumes of greenish-yellow gas, which rolled toward them, pouring down into shell-holes and flowing over into the trenches as if it were a liquid. ”

“ But the spinning wheel and hand loom could not stand long in the path of power-driven machinery, and now huge, blind machines, with stiff, unbending fingers of metal, comb out the matted masses of raw material, remove the dirt and twigs, straighten out the snarls far quicker and better than could be done by hand, and transform the fibers into beautiful fabrics such as in former days would have been the envy of kings. ”

“ As a scouting-machine the airplane did prove to be far superior to mounted patrols which used to perform scout-work. In fact, it changed completely the character of modern warfare. From his position high up in the heavens the flying scout had an unobstructed view of the country for miles and he could see just what the enemy was doing. He could see whether large forces of men were collecting for an attack. ”

“ It was about fifty thousand years ago, according to conservative estimates, that primitive man first began to use tools, and he managed to exist and thrive and develop to a very high degree of civilization during practically the whole of that period without touching the stores of energy that lay beneath his feet. It was only yesterday that the steam engine was invented, and when it was discovered how to turn heat into work and what a wealth of power was stored up in the deposits of coal there started a lavish and profligate squandering of the precious heritage of the Carboniferous era. ”

“ And then there210 were eyes that swam in the sea—cruel eyes that belonged to deadly submarine monsters, eyes that could see without being seen, eyes that could pop up out of the water at unexpected moments, eyes that directed deadly missiles at inoffensive merchantmen. They were cowardly eyes, too, which gave the ship no opportunity to strike back at the unseen enemy. A vessel's only safety lay in the chance that out in the broad reaches of the ocean it might pass beyond the range of those lurking eyes. ”

“ Surely the world owes a tremendous debt to Hussey and particularly to McCormick for introducing machinery into agriculture and starting the train of inventions which in the space of two-thirds of a century have led up to the present remarkable era of machine farming.
There still remains one task of the farmer that has not yet been accomplished with unqualified success by machine. The harvesting of the corn crop is a tedious and disagreeable task and one which the farmer would only too gladly turn over to the machine. ”

“ Warriors of the Paint-Brush When the great European war broke out, it was very evident that the Entente Allies would have to exercise every resource to beat the foe which had been preparing for years to conquer the world. But who ever imagined that geologists would be called in to choose the best places for boring mines under the enemy: that meteorologists would be summoned to forecast the weather and determine the best time to launch an offensive; that psycologists would be employed to pick out the men with the best nerves to man the machine-guns and pilot the battle-planes? ”

“ It is because in nature we must contend with all sorts of surface conditions, soft and hard and seldom smooth, that the rolling principle of locomotion is not to be found in any species of animal. The legs of an animal are levers, just as a wheel is a system of levers, but in the former case the levers can be folded or extended to adapt themselves to all the unevennesses of the ground. No animal can begin to run as fast as an automobile on a good road, but on the other hand we have yet to build a machine which will run as fast as a horse on soft and uneven ground. ”

“ The difference between the machine-gun fire and rifle fire is something like the difference between hitting a tin can with a stone or with a stream of water. It is no easy matter to score a hit with the stone; but any one can train a garden hose on the can, because he can see where the water is striking and move his hose accordingly until he covers the desired spot. In the same way, with the machine-gun, it is much easier to train the stream of bullets upon the mark, and, having once found the mark, to hold the aim. That is one reason why the destruction of a machine-gun is so tremendous ”

“ It is comparatively easy to comprehend the development of machines for dealing with such gross material as earth, rock, iron, and wood, but when we come to consider the infinitely delicate and almost imponderable fibers that go to make up our textiles, the marvel is that any but highly skilled human hands, guided by keen eyesight, could combine the tangled and obstreperous filaments into fine yarn and weave this yarn into complicated patterns of cloth. ”

“ It was not a kick that set Browning to thinking. He looked upon a gun as an engine of the same order as an automobile engine, and really the resemblance is very close. The barrel of the gun is the cylinder of the engine; the bullet is the piston; and for fuel gunpowder is used in place of gasolene. As in the automobile engine, the charge is fired by a spark; but in the case of the gun the spark is produced by a blow of the trigger upon a bit of fulminate of mercury in the end of the cartridge. ”

“ It is the sun’s energy that is stored in coal beds and oil fields; it is the sun’s energy that raises water from the ocean to the tops of our mountains; it is the sun’s energy that makes the winds blow, and through them disturbs the surface of the ocean, and even the tides owe a part of their energy to the attraction of the sun. Why can we not utilize the energy of the sun directly, instead of at second hand? In the sunshine that beats upon the earth there is seventy-thousand times as much energy as we now obtain from coal. ”

“ After gunpowder was invented, the idea of armor for men began to wane, because no armor could be built strong enough to ward off the rifle-bullet and at the same time light enough for a man to wear. The struggle between arms and armor was then confined to the big guns and the steel protection of forts and war-ships.
But not so long ago the machine-gun was invented, and this introduced a new phase of warfare. Not more than one rifle-bullet in a thousand finds its mark on the battle-field. ”

“ We do not ordinarily think of air as having any weight. We know that the ocean of air bears on the earth with a pressure of about 141⁄2 pounds per square inch, or about a ton per square foot at sea level. This amounts to 28 millions tons per square mile and, when we multiply this figure by the number of square miles of surface in the total area of the earth, we find that the whole ocean of air has a weight of 5,500,000,000,000,000 tons—a figure which is far beyond our conception, but it does impress us with the fact that air is a ponderable substance. ”

“ When the wind blows at the rate of 100 to 120 miles per hour, it is strong enough to lift houses off their foundations, to wrench trees out of the ground, to pick up cattle and carry them sailing through the air. Imagine what it would do if its velocity were increased to 1,800 miles per hour. That is what the shell of a big gun has to contend with. As most of the air lies near the earth, the shell of long-range guns meet with less and less resistance the higher they rise, until they get up into such thin air that there is virtually no obstruction. ”