Page:Blackwood's Magazine volume 137.djvu/580

576 from misinterpretation. We sympathise in the complaint that we are the only people who publish our experiments in gunnery in the newspapers. We object to the system of providing foreign Powers at our expense with all that the best wit of England can provide. We have not forgotten those numerous instances which teach us that "the real efficiency of the guns of other Powers will only be known when they are engaged in war." We have not forgotten that the Red Republicans of 1848, breaking into the arsenals of Berlin, disclosed the fact – till then utterly unknown – that Prussia had secretly prepared a complete equipment of rifle small -arms for her troops at a time when no other nation dreamed of any such armament. We have not forgotten that in 1864 Prussia was practically experimenting in the Danish campaign with that "Zünd-Nadel-Gewehr," with which she had silently armed her troops; and that the haughty political conduct towards Austria, which immediately followed that experiment, was mainly due to the confidence which the successful result had inspired. But we find in the voluminous correspondence of the Ordnance Department with private inventors, that the whole principle of our recent action has been to encourage English inventors to go to foreign Powers with their wares before they have been tested in England, and to discourage, in an almost incredible degree, any patriotic wish on the part of individual Englishmen, or even English officers, to restrict to their own country the first use of their inventions.

In case after case we find, to the infinite credit of individuals, that the patriotic wish to sacrifice possible personal gains rather than put into the hands of foreign Powers weapons that may be used with dangerous effect against English sailors or soldiers, has been an efficient operative influence. Nothing could be more satisfactory as a refutation of the cynicism which assumes that such feelings no longer exist amongst us. Nothing, alas! seems to us more disgraceful than the mode in which the very men who are specially trusted with safeguarding the national interests have applied the purely commercial principle, and with a reckless cynicism, rather than themselves be at the trouble to give inventions a fair test, have recommended the inventors to apply to foreign Powers, or have patented the very invention brought to them for secret use, thus blurting out to the world the very confidence which would have added greatly to the immediate power of England had it been loyally kept. We believe we are supported by all military authority when we say that it is scarcely possible to estimate the practical effect in war of some apparently trivial improvement in the armament or the equipment of the soldiers of one country not possessed by another. It is not merely the physical, it is far more the moral effect that has to be considered. The old story of the effect of the iron ramrods of the Prussians in causing the victories of Frederick the Great, is true in principle to this day. It was not that the mere physical advantage directly produced the result; but the soldiers who found that they were better equipped acquired a confidence, the worse equipped soldiers felt a discouragement; and the difference in moral condition of the two