Page:"The next war"; an appeal to common sense (IA thenextwarappeal01irwi).pdf/60

 rule, when a shell of the Great War hit a building, it destroyed much more value in property than its own cost plus that of its projecting charge. The shells which missed are aside from this discussion; for the artillerymen of Napoleon’s army missed just as often in proportion.

Yet Nature always imposes limits on human ingenuity. We arrive at a point beyond which we cannot much further improve any given device. Military experts generally agree that we have about reached that impasse with guns and their explosive projectiles. The “Big Bertha” which bombarded Paris from a distance of seventy miles was only an apparent exception. It was not a real improvement; it was a “morale gun,” useful to the “psychological campaign” of the Germans. It had no accuracy; the gunners “ranged” it on Paris in general, and the shells, according to atmospheric conditions, fell anywhere over an area some four or five miles across.

No; there will be no great improvements in guns and high-explosive projectiles. Even if we have not reached the limit of invention, other methods of destroying life and property hold out much more promise. Among these is the aeroplane. There, we have not nearly reached the barrier set by Nature upon Ingenuity.

A modern weapon works by two distinct processes—the projection, which sends the death-tool far into the region of the enemy and the action—usually some kind of explosion—by which it kills. The