NEW WAR HORRORS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 11 December 1939, Page 4

NEW WAR HORRORS

AMERICAN COMMENT. Interesting is the comment of the American magazine “Time" on the subject of horror in war. “Every now and then some pseudoscientific jack-in-the-box pops up with an alleged death ray,” it states. “Nearest approach to a real death ray is the 19,000.000-volt stream of sub-atomic particles produced at the University of California by Ernest Orlando Lawrence's great new cyclotron. This 225ton machine, whose operators shield themselves by water tank barricades, can will white mice and destroy cancer cells-at popgun range. Installed in a front-line trench it would have less effect on a enemy soldier at 50ft than one well-aimed rifle bullet. “Bombs laden with disease germs, another persistent bugaboo of modern warfare, are shrugged off by bacteriologists. Man, they say, can culture and concentrate disease organisms, but it is hardly likely that he can start epidemics in civil populations unless he reproduces the conditions, many of which are still unknown, that make natural epidemics possible. “Adolf Hitler, in his speech at Danzig, uttered a dark hint that Germany possesses a secret and unique weapon. This threat stirred Professor Archibald M. Low to retaliate. Professor Low is a British television pioneer and jack-of-all-science who worked for the British Government in the last war and invented a wireless control gear for torpedoes. After some scientific snickers at death rays and bacteriological bombs, Professor Low growled: ‘Whether Herr Hitler has any horrors or not to produce at the momen —and I am of opinion he has not —I can truthfully say that if Britain so desired she could at this very moment out-horror Herr Hitler.’ ”