A. Russell Bond

“ He can hear nothing but the terrific roar of his own motor and the hurricane rush of the wind against his ears. He can see nothing but the bluish fog of the clouds. He begins to lose all sense of direction. His compass appears to swing violently to and fro, when really it is his machine that is zig-zagging under his unsteady guidance. The more he tries to steady it, the worse becomes the swing of the compass. As he turns he banks his machine automatically, just as a bicyclist does when rounding a corner. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 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. ”

“ The great World War was more than two-thirds over when America entered the struggle, and yet in a sense this country was in the war from its very beginning. Three great inventions controlled the character of the fighting and made it different from any other the world has ever seen. These three inventions were American. The submarine was our invention; it carried the war into the sea. The airplane was an American invention; it carried the war into the sky. We invented the machine-gun ”

“ No bullet or shell travels in a straight line. As soon as it leaves the muzzle of the gun, it begins to fall, and its course through the air is a vertical curve that brings it eventually down to the ground. This curve is called the "trajectory." No gun is pointed directly at a target, but above it, so as to allow for the pull of gravity. The faster the bullet travels, the flatter is this curve or trajectory, because there is less time for it to fall before it reaches its target. Modern rifles fire their missiles at so high a speed that the bullets have a very flat trajectory. ”

“ 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 ”

“ In modern warfare, guns are fired from a greater distance, so that there will be little danger of their capture. It is impossible for them to fire grape, because the ranges are far too great; besides, it would be impossible to aim a charge of grape-shot over any considerable distance, because the shot would start spreading as soon as they left the muzzle of the gun and would scatter too far and wide to be of much service. But this difficulty has been overcome by the making of a shell which is really a gun in itself. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It takes an exceptional man to go through such a harrowing experience with unshattered nerves. On at least one occasion, a submarine that was being depth-bombed came suddenly to the surface. The hatch flew open and the crew rushed out, holding up their hands and crying, "Kamerad." The U-boat was uninjured, but the shock of a depth bomb explosion had put the electric-lighting system out of commission, and the crew, unnerved by the explosion and terrified by the darkness, had overpowered their officers and brought the boat to the surface. ”

“ A bird's-eye observation is much more accurate than any that can be obtained from the ground. Even before this war, some observations were taken by sending a man up in a kite, particularly a kite towed from a ship, and even as far back as the Civil War captive balloons were used to raise an observer to a good height above the ground. They were the ordinary round balloons, but the observation balloon of to-day is a very different-looking object. It is a sausage-shaped gas-bag that is held on a slant to the wind like a kite, so that the wind helps to hold it up. ”

“ Nature's tricks of camouflage were freely used in the hiding of the implements of war on land. Our big guns were concealed by being painted with leopard spots and tiger stripes, the color and nature of the camouflage depending upon the station they were to occupy. In many cases, they were covered with branches of trees or with rope netting overspread with leaves. So careful was the observation of the air scouts that even the grass scorched by the fire of the gun had to be covered with green canvas to prevent betrayal of the position of the gun. ”

“ America can justly claim the honor of inventing and developing the machine-gun, although Hiram Maxim did give up his American citizenship and become a British subject. By the way, he is not to be confused with his younger brother, Hudson Maxim, the inventor of high explosives, who has always been an American to the core. Of course we must not get the impression that only Americans have invented machine-guns. ”

“ The first implements of war were clubs and spears and battle-axes, all intended for fighting at close quarters. The bow and arrow enabled men to fight at a distance, but shields and armor were so effective a defense that it was only by hand-to-hand fighting that a brave enemy could be defeated. Even the invention of gunpowder did not separate the combatants permanently, for although it was possible to hurl missiles at a great distance, cannon were so slow in their action that the enemy could rush them between shots. ”

“ We know now a great deal more than we used to know about the effect of compressed air on the human system, and because of this knowledge divers have recently descended to depths undreamed of a few years ago. When a diver breathes compressed air, the oxygen is largely consumed and exhaled from the lungs in the form of carbon-dioxide, but much of the nitrogen is dissolved in the blood and does not escape. However, like a bottle of soda-water, the blood shows no sign of the presence of the gas as long as the pressure is maintained. ”

“ Since America invented the machine-gun and also barbed wire, and since America furnished the inspiration for the tank with which to trample down the wire entanglements and stamp out the machine-guns, naturally people expected our army to come out with something better than anything produced by our allies. ”

“ In modern warfare a duel between fixed forts and floating forts is almost certain to end in a draw. Because the former are fixed they make good targets, while the war-ship, being able to move about, can dodge the shell that are fired against it. On the other hand, a fort on land can stand a great deal of pounding and each of its guns must be put out of action individually, before it is subdued, while the fort that is afloat runs the risk of being sunk with a few well-directed shots. ”

“ It seems absurd to think that a shell weighing close to a quarter of a ton could be retarded appreciably by mere air. But when we realize that the shell left the gun at the rate of over half a mile a second—traveling about thirty times faster than an express-train—we know that the air-pressure mounts up to a respectable figure. The pressure is the same whether a shell is moving through the air or the air is blowing against the shell. ”

“ A kite balloon will ride steadily in a wind that would dash a common round balloon in all directions. Observers in these kite balloons are provided with telephone instruments by which they can communicate instantly with the battery whose fire they are directing. But a kite balloon is a helpless object;175 it cannot fight the enemy. The hydrogen gas that holds it up will burn furiously if set on fire. In the war an enemy airplane had merely to drop a bomb upon it or fire an incendiary bullet into it, and the balloon would go up in smoke. ”

“ The spin of the bullet keeps its nose pointing forward. If it were not for the rifling, the bullet would tumble over and over, every which way, and it could not go very far through the air, to say nothing of penetrating steel armor. To gain the spinning-motion the bullet must fit into the barrel snugly enough to squeeze into the spiral grooves. Now there is another American machine-gun known as the Hotchkiss, which was used to a considerable extent by the French Army. It is a gas-operated gun, something like the Colt, and it is air-cooled. ”

“ Eleven years before Germany undertook to conquer Europe two young Americans made the greatest conquest that the world has ever seen. The Wright brothers sailed up into the heavens and gained the mastery of the air. ”

“ The long range gun that shelled Paris was a sensational achievement, but it cannot be called a great invention because it was of little military value. The great German Zeppelins were far from a success because they depended for their buoyancy on a highly inflammable gas. It is interesting to note that while the Germans were acknowledging the failure of their dirigibles the British were launching an airship program, and here in America we had found an economical way of producing a non-inflammable balloon gas which promises a great future for aërial navigation. ”