THE ART AND THE REALMS OF FIRE.

Shannon News, 7 March 1922, Page 3

THE ART AND THE REALMS OF FIRE.

(By W. R. MILLER, for the Shannon News.) Jn ..the primitive days, a century of centuries ago, the dense and dismal jungle covered all lands. And the sphere which encompassed him was in concord with the life of man. He subsisted on the fruit and masticated the roots of trees. His feelings, his actions, his body, his mind, were akin to those of the predatory beasts which he fought with the ferocity of his primeval instincts. In his elemental nature a great fear controlled him. He saw the lurid glare of the volcano spewing forth its living lava, and he ran to cover.' The forest fire struck terror into him, and he cowered like an animal before it. But- because he was a man, he was curious. And because he had two hands and was a man, he fashioned weapons from sticks and stones with which to master his enemies. He sharpened one stone with another, and the flints of the shores of old England were struck one on the other. Sparks flew, and the dry grass on which they fell burst into fire. And man saw and ran from it,- ran with the surging fear of the unknown adding speed to his flight. When the flame died out, curiosity mastered him again He discovered that by rubbing two sticks together he could get heat and then flame. So he achieved the art of. fire, and used it -to HTs purposes. ,

A few months back one of our leviathan ships went into dry dock from a collision. The mass of rivetted steel plates on her bow had been twisted and buckled out of recognition. The oxy-acetylene flame cut her bows away in a few days, and in a week or more she was able to put. to sea. Acetylene is a fire like the sparks of the flint oi: the Stone Age. And man is a curious animal —and ingenious. in our complex, so-called civilised life, the two extremes often seem to meet and to merge, and the single source gives rise to opposites. Virtue is the offspring of vice, and good the daughter of evil. However it be, the greed of the early alchemists bequeathed a munificent knowledge and wisdom. They heated galena in the furnace and obtained lead. They increased the heat, and the lead became smaller and smaller till a bead of silver remained. “So,” they said, “we have turned the galena ink) lead, we have changed the lead into silver.” We know to-day the silver and lead were already present in hie galena; but ” the early alchemists sought, in their avidity, to change all metals into gold. And they sought the Elixir of Life, the precious Liquid that would help man to retain the health and vigour, of youth.. They grew older and they grew greyer as they quested; but they applied fire to the obtaining of the metals, and the whole texture of our civilisation is attained with the steel, the iron, and the others from the furnace.

Then came Priestley, Lavosier and Bunsen, who proved where the alchemists were wrong. They explained why a candle burns and applied a science to the heating and changing of substances.

The Iron Age brought the need of coal. 'The rapid combustion of gas and air gave power to the pistons of the gas engine. "The oil and petrol engines which are pushing, hauling, lifting and driving in a thousand places sent up the cry for petroleum. So oil came to rank with coal in the world of fire.

The American realised the field, and sank oil bores. He tapped it near the surface and it came up under artesian pressure. So he sank deeper, sometimes to 2000 feet, and the oil burst forth, a; column two hundred feet high, delivering millions of gallons.' The man of science paved the way, and the financier stepped along it. The household mortgaged its furniture, and, with the thrill of the-racecourse, invested in the great oil gamble. Sharks and the shrewd financiers filled their purses; the rich mail became richer and the poor poorer. In a Scottish town in Ayrshire, Alfred Nobel, struggled with the nitroglycerine. Its fumes impaired his health, his factory was blown to atoms. However, he persisted, and discovered dynamite and blasting gelatine. The explosive can tear down the pro-

jecting headland. It can deepen the harbour and cut the canal. * * * #• w

Then the maniacs, who conceived the first gun at the battle of Crecy, > and fashioned its barrel from a tree j trunk, experimented with the lyddite, the cordite, the T.N.T., and the ful- j minate of mercury. The slower ex- ' plosive made the shell and the big j gun possible. A few years back, in less than two j weeks we poured two million shells 1 on to Messines Ridge. The guns were wheel to wheel. There were all sizes of them—navlal guns, howitzers, 60pounders, 18-pounders and machine guns. And the great colossal noise of them/; as they blazed and smoked through the day, and .echoed and-

flashed all night, made- “jingoes”' oT the best of us. The pandemonium was music to the beast of the Stone Age that stirred in 'us. We gloried in our wrath and our power; we tliriiied as ■vvb slipped the breach open, as we rammed the shell home, and kept the 18-pounder dancing with her fourteen shells a minute; while human beings were facing where our playthings were ripping and tearing, and they' were scorched and.maimed in the fire of science.

As in the days oi yore, we do not retire to the cave and the mud hut when the sun has flickered its last light.

The glaring headlights of the flying express penetrate the night, while the fireman heaps on the coals. The vessel ploughs its way through midocean. The thoroughfares are thronged and lighted; the gas and the electric glow-lamp light the home. These are the children of our thought; but the immensity of the fire which sve handle at our finger tips is only a wheel within a wheel. The creed of the Socialist follows in the wake of tire .inventive. He raises his protest against the oppression of the gamble and misapplied science. ■ And the primeval man of the jungle, who swung along the branches, and whirled around the tree-top with his tail—if he had one—also had his mischievous moods.

And our prototype of the Stone Age would swing his club and split his brother’s head to enforce his argument, and say-, with present-day philosophy, “These men, who are sons of the sons of my sons are alike to me in their moods and their system. They kill as I kill. They are curious as 1 am curious. The lever that they puli starts the small gear wheels which drive the big wheels, which they cannot slop with their naked hands — even as I struck a stone on a stone, and gave a spark which fired the grass and burnt out the home' of my father, which, started by my hand, could not be stopped by it.”