SCIENCE IN WARFARE.

Press, Volume LV, Issue 16421, 15 January 1919, Page 3

SCIENCE IN WARFARE.

MANY INVENTIONS BY ALLIES. In a comparison of the inventive genius of the Entente and the Central Powers, the balance is overwhelmingly in favour of the Allies, says an American journal. On the testimony of the German commanders themselves, the most decisive of the new weapons of attack is the tank designed by the British. The motor-driven aeroplane, an American invention, was put to mili-tary-use by both sides at the opening of the war; but its early development was due to the French. They wero the first to mount the. machine-gun, and with the British, except for one brief period, they have led in speed, manoeuvring ability, and all-round efficiency. Save for tho production of the heavy semi-mobile howitzer and the long-range gtm, the Allies have led in gunnery. The British introduced drumfire at Nouvo Chapelle, tho French developed first the stationary and then tho creeping barrage (rideau de feu) at Verdun. To the French, also, we owe tho location of guns by sound; and the Allies wore the first to make use of heavy, long-rang© guns mounted on railway cars. 'Tho Maxim heavy machine-gun has remained until recently the single typo used by German troops; for the Allies were tho first to use the light portable machine-gun, the British adopting the Lewis gun, tho French the light Chuachat, and the Americans the Browning. The Germans entered the war with a small trench-mortar, the minenwerfer, and their attempts to improve upon it have failed; hut the Allies have shown remarkable fertility in this field, as witness the portable Stokes mortar of the British, which can be carried on a man's back, and the variety of hand and rifle grenades brought out by the French and British. Tho Germans, thrown on the defensive, developed the pill-box; but the Allies at onco countered by mounting heavier guns in their tanks, the French even using their famous 75 in a new tank of their own design. Later they brought out the small, fast tanks, which have contributed so largely to the German defeat. When the war was carried into tho open last spring, the Germans showed a small hand-drawn fieldgun for uso with the storm troops. It was too heavy, and the troops, disgusted, left the piece behind. But the French built a. liin piece, much lighter, I which has done yeoman service in the | great counter-offensive. ■ Tlie submarine, which the Germans have made an instrument of piracy, has served to stimulate allied invention more, perhaps, than any other agency of the war. So far as we know, except for its increase in size and speed, the German submarine reveals no fundamental, no radical improvement over tho original American, French, and Italian types. It is in meeting the frightful emergency presented by the German resort to wholesale murder on the high seas, that the Allies have risen to great heights of inventiv genius. The British developed tin"blimp," or small and speedy, two-man dirigible airship, the fast motor-boat, and the depth bomb; America contributed the seaplane; aud France, Great Britain, and America, the listening devices. But when Germany turned from the legitimate fields of warfare to those that are forbidden by the common consent of civilisation, she had the field to herself, and her ■ record will stand through tho ages to come as a monument to her lawless ferocity. The list includes:—(l) The loosing of clouds ot asphyxiating gas, calculated to kill with the most excruciating torture; (2) the discharge of gas shells; (3) the spraying of the enemy with streams of liquid fire; (4) the providing of German troops with incendiary grenades for setting fire to towns and villages, as was done during the occupation of Belgium; (o) the invention of incendiary bombs for dropping upon undefended towns. And although it necessitated no mechanical inventive faculty, it eertainlv called for a certain ingenuity of cruel reasoning to perceive that- the bombing of hospitals and the sinking of hospital ships would preclude the return of a certain percentage of wounded men to the fighting ranks.