WAR INVENTIONS.

Evening Star, Issue 23683, 17 September 1940, Page 6

WAR INVENTIONS.

In the same way as during the years of the Great War, the efforts of British scientists to bring the present struggle to a conclusion as quickly as possible appear to be winning a measure of solid success worthy of appreciative notice. It is said that Britons have always been quick to invent but slow to exploit. This probably refers, however, to times of peace.. When the Empire is actually in danger, new methods of a positive nature, as well as counters to enemy tactics, are evolved with great speed and thoroughness, reflecting a fertility of imagination which clashes with the ideas of foreigners who are inclined to regard the race as essentially stolid. In the matter of exploitation the German development of the British tank into something akin to a land battleship may be quoted as an example of how another Power has leaped .ahead of us in peace time, although it must bo said in extenuation of Great Britain that, being a maritime nation, she has had to concern herself first and foremost with the construction of powerful naval units.

Since the present war started Britain has done remarkably well in the realm of both invention and exploitation. Improvements have been made to the already brilliantly-conceived fighter planes, and to the equally ingenious equipment for submarine detection. The magnetic mines have been adequately countered. The invention of incendiary leaflets capable of spreading fires over a very wide area has raised a howl of protest from a nation whose people would like to think they had a prerogative over the creation of weapons of offence. It was stated in the cablegrams lately that the coastal defences are equipped with a new and deadly device for helping to repel an invasion, and, finally, much seems to have been achieved in the development of really effective anti-aircraft fire.

Doubtless many people will be wishing during these anxious days for the Empire’s heart that a ray would be invented Jiy British scientists which would hurst magnetos and bring aeroplanes crashing to the ground. If only this could he done, they may argue, the striking power of Goering’s air armada would be completely destroyed. That the war in the air will have to be fought out by men and machines, however, is indicated in an article written some weeks ago by Professor A. M. Low, the noted consulting engineer and research physicist, who dealt with the idea of such a ray thus: “My reply is that magnetos are not always necessary on aeroplanes, and that no one has yet found out how to direct a ray which carries any power. The biggest wireless station in the , world could hardly move a fly at a distance of a few yards.’’ Of bombs containing foot-and-mouth germs or typhoid fever he has this to say: “The only thing that has prevented their use is that they will not work. The truth is that provisions against infection are very effective.” Apart from the exploitation of the magnetic mine and the great use made of armoured units, the Germans have not shown outstanding initiative so far. Once again reliance on massed offensive and sheer brute force seems uppermost in their minds.

In no aspect of the war has their inventive genius been so amazingly noticeable as in the concocting of lies and exaggerated reports, and the wordy machinations in general of the propaganda department. Such features of their campaign, culminating for the moment in the stories that' time bombs near Buckingham Palace were “ planted by the British,” that London is ” rocking under a blizzard of coughs and sneezes,” and that the 11.A.F. has been dropping over Germany and occupied territory containers carrying the Colorado or potato beetle, thereby spreading disease, touch heights of imaginative ingenuity which can hardly be surpassed. About them, however, is a certain childishness to which some remarks made about Germany by Joseph Conrad many years ago can aptly be applied. The celebrated author wrote: “ These were merely the expressions of the simplicity of a nation which more than any other has a tendency to run into Ihe grotesque.”