NOISELESS WAR.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXI, Issue 9180, 1 September 1908, Page 4

NOISELESS WAR.

The American advance towards abolishing noise in warfare seems rather , incongruous with other national traits. We read of Thanksgiving Day and the Fourth of July celebration as carnival? of atrocious sounds. Daily traffic in New York shrieks, throbs and roars along its deafening way. But "whatever brawls disturb the streets," says Mr Hiram Maxim, "we must have quiet on our battlefields. By this last blessing of civiliation, i£ applied to all sorts and conditions of guns, Bellona's voice may roar as gently as any Bucking dove. In future the harassed mil lionaire, nerve-worn with tram-belle, motors, over-head railways, and Fourth of July crackers, may seek a rest-cure by taking to artillery practice. Yet one would rather regret this new dumb-crambo effect at a sham fight, when thoie patriotic persons who stand through long hours anything but "at ease" in rain or sun, repelling:, with blank cartridges the assaults of an invisible enemy, would not feven have the satisfaction meanwhile of hearing themselves making a noise! From a humanitarian poirit of view, also, there is a question whether noiseless warfare might not aggravate rather than take from the sufferings of the soldiers death."