Page:Science and War.djvu/21

 themselves by means of the spent energy of the preceding discharge and which being no longer dependent on human manipulation can fire at any desired rate up to say ten shots a second. Aeroplanes continually report by wireless telegraphy particulars of the movements of the enemy and the location of his guns and thus almost destroy the element of surprise that was once the main object of strategy. Where sight fails to locate his batteries, sound is made to do its work. Bombing by airships and aeroplanes forms a new branch of tactics as does also the offensive by gas attacks and the corresponding defensive by gas masks. Add to these the use of submarines and the power of instantaneous communication between the supreme command and each unit of a fleet wherever located by means of wireless telegraphy and we realize that it is no empty phrase to say that we have entered into a new era in War.

We shall find, as I have indicated, that the novel developments which are so characteristic of the recent war have been by no means exclusively due to scientific 15