Morning journal and courier., 1883-02-16
Some Military Inventions,

A curious proposal was submitted a short time back to the Ordinance department by an officer of experience. The scheme was set out with abundance of logic and filled some thirty pages of foolscap. It was proposed to annul the effects of rife fire by clothing the soldier in 8 suit of armor. The British 1nfantrymen were to go into battle before the living embodiments of those straw. stuffed but mail clad warriors who, arrayed upon the shelves of the United Service In. stitution and the Tower, look down upon us from the distance of medi@val times The new armor was to be of a superior descrip tion, composed partly of steel and partly o1 Cape buffalo hide, 8 substance which posses. ses extreme tenacity. It has been proved that at 100 yards 3 S6 of an inch of steel will defy Martini Henry bullet and upon this calculation the Inventor made out that by using steel to protect the vital, ana hide to cover the non-visal, part, soldier might be made quasi-invu1nerable to rife fire without imposing too great weight upon him. But and it is very big but-to enable the man to carry his armor, 1t would be necessary to relieve him of all he now carries, except rifle and cartridges. 'tAnd what if you do ?' says the inventor; ''you can carry all that for him in carts; that is simply matter of transport arrangement" We can fancy a committee considering the subject adding
 "And still more 8 matter of transport disar- engagement" Granted that your soldier has been made invulnerabls, how now do you undertake to give him mobility? One great desideratum being to disencumber an army of transport as much as possible, you would double or treble the existing proportions if the soldiers kits were transferred to wheeled carriages. Perhaps our friend with the wheel would see here his opportunity. The designer, of course, did not suffer his calcu- lations to be disturbed by questions which he would consider of trivial consequence as compared with the advantages to be got out of his invention. He reasoned very logical ly that in a stand-up fight between an invul- nerable battalion, or one only vulnerable perhaps in the heel, and another simply flesh cased, the feelings of the former would be infinitely more serene, their persons more secure, and their victory a matter of certain ty. And, if war could be resolved into an affair where opponents may meet on 8 flat, confined within parallelogram between high walls, we should all of us prefer being in the ranks of the invulnerables. It is plain that flesh and blood pure and simple would stand no chance. This was Louis Napoleon's idea when he caused four thousand iron breast plates to be sent to the Crimea for the use of the Guard. He saw iii imagination his victo- rious troops swarming over the Russian par apets, some few dropping peppered through the legs but the mass sweeping on resistless- ly, the enemy giving way on all sides as they found their hail of bullets turned aside by the imperned6les of the stormers. The Elm peror Nicholas mocked when he heard of his rivals scheme, and said his soldiers did not need armor, and the French generals them selves thought it advisable to leave the breastplates in store until after the assault had been delivered The objections to put ting an army into armor are sufficiently obvi- ous to all but the would. be inventor, who, we believe, has never condoned the rejection of his scheme. Probably, if the ingenious gentlemen crossed the Irish Channel he would meet with more success in explaining his methods to vulnerable landlords and timid process-servers-