WAR AND INVENTION.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXV, Issue 44, 23 February 1915, Page 4

WAR AND INVENTION.

Almost every Ministry of War is plagued with proposals for inventions “which will make war impossible,” remarks a winter in the Sydney “Daily Telegraph.” Yet the accounts of recent lighting in Europe show that men are killing one another with cold steel just as ruthlessly as they did in the days of the crusades. Twelve months ago the world believed that the adversaries in a great battle would hardly see one another, but to-day we are told that in the trenches the oldtime hand grenade is strongly in evidence, and one almost wonders whether the Chinese “stink-pot” would not be a serviceable article of as. sault! All this by way of announcing that a “distinguished English chemist” has produced an explosive substance the effect of which when used by artillery shells is “annihilation.” It is claimed that “a shell filled with this substance will, on detonating, give out a blast of flame, over a mile long and nearly two hundred .yards wide, of so intense a nature that nothing can live in its area of passage.” If we are to believe the military correspondent of the “Standard,” the invention is an absolute fact. The War Office is reported to have tested the new substance, to be hereafter known as “Annihilate,” and that it is to be adopted forthwith. If the full claim of the inventor be established, nothing should resist the action of the explosive, neither the deepest trenches nor the strongest fortifications. It ought to drive the enemy out of Belgium, France, and Poland in a week. Meanwhile however, whilst quite prepared to admit the acumen of the War Office scientists, it would be just as well to proceed with our arrangements as if “Annihilate” had not been invented.