SCIENCE IN WARFARE.

Taihape Daily Times, 7 January 1919, Page 6

SCIENCE IN WARFARE.

MANY INVENTIONS BY ALLIES GERMAN RECORDS OF HORRORS. 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 military use by both sides at the opening of the war; u i s Sarly .development fwas due to the French. They were 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 the production of the heavy semi-mobile howitzer and the long-range gun, the Allies have led in gunnery. The British introduced drumfire lat Neuve- Ohapelle, the French developed first the stationary and then the creeping barrage (ndeau de feu) at Verdun. To the French, also, we owe the location of guns by sound; and the Allies were the first to make use of heavy long-range guns mounted on hallway cars. The Maxim heavy machine-gun has remained until recently the single type used by German troops; for the Allies were the first to use the light, portable machine-gun, the British adopting the Lewis gun, the French the light Chuachat, and the Americans the Browning. The Germans entered the war with a small trench-mortar, the ramenwerfer, and their attempts to improve upon it have failed; but the Allies have shown remarkable fertility in this field, las 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. The Germians, thrown on the defensive, developed the pill-box; but the Allies at once 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 tank, which have contributed so largely to the German defoiat. When the war was carired into the open last spring, the Germans showed a small handdrawn field-gun for use with the storm troops. It was too heavy, and the troops, disgusted, left the piece behind. But the French built a piece, much lighter, which hlas. done yeoman service in the great counteroffensive. The 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 limow, -except for alts increase «n size and speed, the German submarine reveals no fundamental, no Radical improvement over the 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 inventive genius. The British developed the “blimp,” or small and speedy, two-man dirigible airship, the fast motor-boat, and the depth bomb; America contributed the seaplane, and Friancc 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 the (ages to come as a monument to her lawless ferocity. The list includes:—(l) The loosing of clouds of 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. (5) The invention of incendiary bombs for dropping upon undefended towns. And although it necessitated no mechanical inventive faculty, it certainly called for la 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.