IN ONE OF THE WORLD'S WORKSHOPS

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 233, 30 March 1912, Page 10

IN ONE OF THE WORLD'S WORKSHOPS

SIGHTSEEING AT THE ROYAL _ ARSENAL. Tliat there is no royal load to learning is as true of things learned out of |School as in, perhaps truer since then there are no teachers whose business in l!£e it is to impart knowledge and Miiooth out difficulties. Nevertheless, the visitor to London finds, if not royai roads open to him, at least wide avenues of information that do all but the magic of making him remember all he sees. Here, in addition to the temporary advantage of being a visitor, and so, probably, not only an individual of some leisure, but also one bent on sight-seeing and ready to appreciate. lie lias tin; distinct privilege of being eligible for sprcial pusses to many national institutions that are in themselves an education. And a distinguished visitor's pass is to by no means hjjhtly thought of, since it gives one, instead of a fussy, garrulous or querulous guide, as the ease may be, an official who singles out for special attention and whse business it is to make you think as well of his property as may be. The pity is that numbers of New Zealanders return to the Dominion without evei having had an inkling of what might have bene seen '"had thev but known."

Just as actual experience <tjf travel abroad'enlarges one's mind and broadens one s views as no nurnbei' of lessons in geography, architecture, literature, or political economy has power to do, so the key to every great industry and all that it affects is found in its workshops. And a visit to the workshop of the British Army and Navy—tile Royal Arsenal at Woolwich—is a possibility to every New Zealander who cares to take advantage of it. Cameras may not be taken past the sturdy police at the entrance gates, nor notebooks, which are as strictly taboo as in an examination room, and one has no doubt that there are holies of holies where even the peaceful Maorilandrr may not intrude, but what is shown is sufficient, if that is necessary, to brine tome once again the thought of how scientific is the age in which we live, and not only that, but how comparatively unimportant will, in the near future, be all but the very few men whose brains will direct the demons of accuracy and destruction that we call engines of war, guns, torpedoes, and torpedo destroyers, mines, etc., et«. It seemed to the writer, when spending a day on a man-,of-war out in Portsmouth Harbor recently, and watehin" the gunners at work, that the peace--lover should at least see one good aspeot of war m the future in the uncanny perfection to which instruments of naval attack have attained, since, if thev pet more automatic, the great ••game of war," that it has before now been calL-j will surely become such in earnest, and the lives of men not be necessary as even willing proofs of their loyalty. This is beside the question", however, and but dwelt on a thought that intrudes in the moulding place of so great wonders as Woolwich Arsenal. From the turning out, from a long slender revolving rod of brass or steel, of the tiniest bolts and screws, to the completing of a monster twelve-inch gun. one may watch the whole fascinating process of gun-fashioning, and, out of a multitude of reflections that crowd iin on particular]}' the feminine onlooker, two simple ones are specially prominent, viz.. the many uses to which oil is put in a naval workshop, and the great percentage of hoy labor that is all that is called for in these days of the despotism of machinery. There's not much credit for the boy in the transaction, since he s mainly merely the owner- of a couple of hands useful for picking bullets up, for instance, stacking them, and tiansferring them to another machine; tlwn, when they have been begun, continued and finished by machinery, arranging them in trays for storage. One s first impression of the workshop is of huge chambers whose ceilings seem made of leather belting, all endlessly revolving; of the largest cranes one has ever seen in use; of gigantic hammers, one of which alone is capable of dealing a blow two thousand tons in weight; and of deafening noises. Near by, in i ooms as silent as the men who invented the contents, is a museum of obsolete projectiles—infernal machines that, to amateur eyes, seem deadly enough still, but that paie into genuine insignificance' beside the discoveries of to-day. Here are specimens of the light ball (Boxer) that used to be sent up into the air from a mortar, and that, at its height, opened out like a parachute with a ball of fire beneath that lit up, in a flash, the enemy's camp, and guided our guns as to where to best send a deadly showed. This became deservedly obsolete because, when the wind blew towards the English camp, the parachute, of course, instantly turned traitor. In this room, too, were examples of the old methods of laming the horses of the enemy—cruel spiiked balls that were hiden in the grass, and others that instantly exploded when trodden on; and a hundred other curiosities to do with I war as it was waged a hundred vears

The pathway to what seemed to the writer one of the most fascinating of all the wonder-rooms, was flanked by enormous shells that, it sems, were destined for use at Sebastopol, but that had not left England when peace was declared. Not far away from them was an immense old mortar, from which they would have been fired, and that has become famous in military history since it killed, in one instant, forty scientists who were experimenting with it. \\ ithin the building so vivid an are of light shone on our faces that all but one spot looked like a grim cavern with mysterious gauntleted men, silhouetted against the furnace, to add to the delu»ion. Here iron was being converted into steel by the Bessemer process, and a weirdly interesting performance it was. Visitors may not go anywhere near the monstrous cauldron, the mouth of which gave the mighty light we saw, and the fact that one stands in the background looking on at the work lends the scene yet further an atmosphere of unreality. While we stood silently watching and striving to pierce the darkness and find what else dwelt in the great room, the high cauldron, full of boiling steam, moved slowly, slowly up and down, presenting its red-hot mouth now and again to its nurse who administered the special medicine necessary—viz., the different ingredients required in the process. Then up, up, up went the mouth till the pot stood upright and only a narrow crescent of light was visible to us who stood beneath. Then, again, it started its downward journey for its next mixture, and once again we were blinded with the brilliance of its light. Xow we had made out long lines of moulds—to be later made shells—-wait-ing to be filled with the molten steel when it was ready. A voice mug out, more machinery was set in motion, men ran to and fro, and one felt suddenly in the grip of one of the terrifying nightmares of childhood. Far overhead came a su.lden sullen roar, and an enormous black object stretched right from one side to the other, solid, creaking lustily yet cautiously. A huge iron bucket rose in the air on the travelling crane and seemed gingerly to approach the wide-open mouth of the cauldron impatient to b> rid of its contents.

LIKE A NIGHTMARE. At last the mouth was ready, the ■bucket, too, and suddenly at a word out gushed from one to the other a cascade of fiery fluid such as one reads of as punishment for witches in fairy talesterrible, yet fascinatingly beautiful. Once more, then, came up thoughts of nightmare, for the light seemed suddenly ' to go out, as the cauldron rose to empty \ out its refuse on the other side and away from us. Then the gigantic crane swept across the room with its molten 'burdencloser and closer—a mountain of iron with the great bucket full of the terrible contents. it reached the 'moulds set ready, and, hovering over them, was let down gently. Asbestos-gloved hands turned a tap, and out, as into a jelly bowl, tumbled the delicate strange combination of lire that looked like water. Out of the darkness into the cold morning air we went, with the wintry sun above us dwarfed beyond all cornparison beside the memory of the fiendish ball of light we had just left behind. Through room after room of wonders we went after that—into one where a long steel monster was being automatically bound up with its armor of a hundred and eighty-eight miles of copper wir'-: into another where,..almost completed. the twelve-inch destructor is dipped in a sixty-foot cauldron of oil and made ready for its last bright coat; into another where a mighty one lay newly stamped, "For God and Right," and one where gun-carriages are fttomatically painted: and another where a large axle, red-hot, was being beaten into shape by a huge hammer; and yet another where machines were making ammunition eases. And others and others. . But always, to one watcher, the pouring of molten terror—such as inhuman teachers once taught us hell was made of—into lines of moulds, in cavern-like grimness, with shadowy men and a groaning crane above all," remain a memory of Woolwich Arsenal and a tribute to the horrors of war of which we so glibly prate in history books and times of peace.