Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 88.djvu/44

16 tance at which the large guns were fired in the battle the bullets would not have reached her.

It would not be possible for an army to carry around on land by any means whatever the big guns of war ships; so that the curious condition has come about that the dangerous sea, which defied for centuries the ability of man to move upon it, except very slowly and over little distances, is now contributing much more than the land to the exercise of his power.

The destruction wrought upon the Emden, of which these photographs give such gruesome proof, has another interest for us, of a character not philosophic, but eminently practical, because it suggests that if this damage could be done to a strong, steel structure, like the Emden, what would have happened to buildings, in New York, if they had been the targets instead. And it also suggests what might have been the' effect if those buildings had been the targets not of the comparatively small projectiles which were fired at the Emden, but of fourteen-inch projectiles weighing fourteen hundred pounds, filled with high explosive, fired from a hostile ship.

The American fleet having been defeated, a single ship carrying guns able to fire projectiles fifteen miles, and protected against submarines by numerous destroyers and by other means, could, in two or three hours, fire into New York from a point beyond the reach of any of our guns, one hundred high explosive shells, which falling on our streets, power stations, subways, elevated railroads and skyscrapers, would make the vicinity of Wall street look like these pictures of the Emden.