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 impossible, merely for the sake of killing or frightening civilians had no attractions for us. The occurrence however possesses great interest for us because it shews the pitch to which Science has brought artillery by its work upon explosives. In its flight the projectile from Big Bertha must have reached a height four times as great as Mount Everest, the highest mountain in the world. It owed its long range to the fact that during two thirds of its flight it was passing through regions where the air was so rarefied that its resistance was negligible. And finally the distance passed over by the projectile was so great that if the Germans had taken the trouble to aim at any particular building they must have allowed nearly half a mile for the fact that during the flight the rotation of the earth would to that extent carry the target further towards the east than it would carry the gun.

So much for the help of Science in the realm of explosives. But I have said that the special formative factors of the late war were not the result of purely military science but of the advances 29