Wars of the Future.

Huntly Press and District Gazette, Volume 4, 23 July 1915, Page 3

Wars of the Future.

The war of the future will be the war of the inventor, even more than it is to-day. Science, mechanics, and electricity' have, as we ali know, revolutionised modern warfare to a. terrible degree. Talk to men who remember the Crimean War, and they will tell you that the preseut conflict is not war ; it is wholesale murder, fearful, horrible, and inhuman. The wars of the future, however, if the scientists is to be believed, will bo even more destructive. At present he is experimenting with heat rays. If, he contends, light rays can bo thrown upon a hostile position with the searchlights, why cannot heat rays be similarly reflected ; and if heat rays can he sent to a distance, why not the hottest rays possible —namely, those of oxy-acetylene torch ? Before such a fiery glate fortresses of steel and stone would melt, the biggest guns would crumble down into pools of steel, and whole regiments of men might, with one blast, be Shrivelled into ashes. Neither do scientists consider it outside the bounds of possibility in the future to devise means of detonating explosives at a distance by wireless waves. The latter at present scattor in every direction, but the day may come when it will be practicable to restrict them to only one direction, so that they may be aimed: and it is not too far fetched to predict that some future general, touching a button, will send speeding to their target which will bo, perhaps, an entire army divison, wireless impulses so powerful that they will electrocute every man within their range. in regard to big guns, experts say thattho limit is by no means reached with the manufacture of 17in. firing monsters. They prophesy 60in. and 70ia. guns which will carry sixty or eighty miles, the range being given by aviators signalling by wir 1 less. Again, plans are already under way for the construction of monster submarines, with a cruising radius from London to New York, The next half-century, indeed, may see battleships swept from the seas, and some nation holding the mast< y . f the 00 tan by virtue of a float of submarines.