MAKING WAR IMPOSSIBLE

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LI, Issue 130, 23 May 1908, Page 4

MAKING WAR IMPOSSIBLE

.Mr. Nib'la 'JV-ln. in iiiMressing a soIcel audience of scientists at the Wal-dorf-Astoria the other day, predicted that the wars of the future will be conducted by means of invisible electric heat rays, projected through space, and which will lick up and destroy an entire army iu the course ol a few moments.

This is precisely what. Mr. 11. G. Wells made the Martians do in his "War of the Worlds." It was then regarded as merely the nightmare of a sensational novelist. Yet to-day, only ten years afterwards, we find one of the world's leading scientists gravely announcing its possibility, and even its feasibility, given certain conditions.

There i* one consolation, though. The use of heat rays alter this fashion would be bound to result eventually in the total abolition of all war, since no soldiers, however brave, could be got to face the certainty of death by burning. And tliis eventuality may be nearer than we imagine. Japan is even now experimenting with an apparatus which will enable lier tn destroy a hostile Heel approaching anywhere near her shores, by the simple process of blowing up the magazines of the ships composing it by means of electric ether waves, similar to iliom* used in wireless telegraphy, but naturally much stronger. When ironclads can thus tie made to commit involuntary suicide, sailors will decline to serve iu them under any term- whatever, just as soldiers will slop enlisting into armies that can lie shrivelled into nothingness by the mer' 1 1 rc.sMirc of a button, 1 controlled by an operator situated, perhaps, lilly miles distant from the scene of action.