The Penn's Grove record., 1888-03-31
PROGRESS IN
What the Nations Have Done for war
Purposes.

IL AASH AN%N~ A0b
and hetlinlte, with which armies car
be destroyed and Notifications blown to
atoms; they have invented methods for
the wholesale annihilation Of everything
and everybody, but they have not yet
devised ways and means for the employ
ment Of the same, except in certain
cases. which do not always present
themselves. Mines sometimes are ex-
| ploded at the least opportune moment,
and are only practicable when they can
| be laid without let or hindrance during
a siege, or on the supposition that the
enemy will present himself exactly at
the proper instant, while as charges to
projectiles, they occasionally ~disappoint
those who use them. And surprising
| even that they did invariably come up
to great expectations, the field of their
usefulness is necessarily limited, and
| most necessarily remain so until some
| body does contrive ways and means by
| which they can be worked with as
| easily as ordinary common POWDER,
Rockets and balloons, you must know,
| are the particular desiderata at present
of course, l mean balloons and rock
| cts that will 60 in the right direction
| and not behave eccentrically-and so
| far nobody has hit upon any method
| for their direction which has stood the
test of practical experience, although
''the man who Is well informed'' has
| learned that at last a solution has been
found to the very interesting problem
| of aerial navigation.
With directable balloons we shall be
~invincible, sing in chorus the big news
| papers, for 10! a Frenchman-he has an
Italian name, but was born Transal-
| pinley-a patriot who has refused the
| most tempting foreign offers, is about
to endow his country with a 'bless-
ing!' Where will an enemy be? what
can he do If we, sailing above his head,
can learn and so forestall his every
movement, not to speak of the dismay
and terror sown in his ranks, decimated
by the explosives which we will shower
down upon his head? l should say,
effectively, that the enemy would be
nowhere, only / am very i%ncredulous
still, having studied pretty attentively
all that has been as yet accomplished in
aerostation, which, if we were to have
believed announcements similar to those
made now a twelvemonth ago, had even
then been reduced to a positive certain
ty by Capt. Krebs at the aerostatic
laboratory of Meudon.
That steerable free balloons will be
very uteful in war cannot be question:
ed, judging from what was accomp-
lished with the Captive article at Maui
beuge; Fleurus, Charleroi and Antwerp
in 1914, at Fenice in 1S49, at Richmond
in June, 1862, at Pasa-Pueu, in Para
quay, twenty years ago. On the 9th Of
September M. laurel, an apothecary of
Metz, attempted to communicate with
the National Defense government by
means of small rerostats, and in the
course of the following ten days did get
safely to their destination about two
thirds of the 300 messages sent out
from the beleaguered city; and during
the siege of Paris, thanks to NM. Yon,
D'ArtoiS and the brothers Goddard,
155 persons, 500 carrier pigeons and
5000, 600 of letters reached the pro-
vinces by means of balloons between
the % of September, 1870, and the 2Sth
Of January, 1871. But these results,
although encouraging, only proved that
communications might possibly be kept
up aerially; they were not absolutely
satisfactory, as the aeronauts were al
ways exposed to aleatory risks depen-
dent upon atmospheric circumstances,
so that there lever could be any cer-
tainty of where they would land.
l suppose, however, that the Meudon
people have accomplished something
serious in the course of the past three
years, as the French army has now a
regular balloon train, with two officers,
ninety-four men and seven vehicles,
including a Hydrogen wagon" for
field service, and a fortress service of
five officers and 142 non-commissloned
officers and privates, which organiza-
ton has been taken as a model by Italy,
Russia and Belgium, the countries in
which, next to France, most interest
has been manifested in this question.
In England military acrostation only
began to be developed in 1873, when a
series of experiments were made at
Woolwich under the directions of Capt.
Noble, assisted by Capts. Lee, Elsdale
and Templer, the latter an aeronaut of
acknowledged competency. But their
experiments were only with captive
balloons-the Saracen, the Talisman,
the Crusader, the Pioneer, etc.,-and
did nothing to advance the solution of
the most important problem, how to
steer balloons, which problem still re-
mains as it was when balloons were
used in Afghanistan, Zululand and
Egypt.
In Germany the balloon question is
still less advanced, although Frances
powerful enemy has spared no effort to
get at her neighbours secrets. There
was an attempt made not long ago, at
the sham seige of Mayence, when one
balloon was lost altogether and the
other just escaped destruction, while,
still more recently, the staff officers
who, near Berlin, undertook to calcu-
late from a balloon car the distance
between the two armies, not only failed
to do so, but were obliged to give up
the job altogether, as their machine
could eve be raised to the required
altitude. In spite Of all the money
spent the German aerostatic corps is rs
badly provided with the apparatus and
is as inexperienced rs it was in 1870,
when a detachment, trained at Cob
lentZ, could only attain an altitude of
1oo lcct az oASticilu, WLcu ~ Nao uc-
sired to obtain a birds eye view of
Strasbourg.
And the conclusion is that the French
are still long way ahead of all other
nations, although there is reason to
suppose the probability of a disagree
bic surprise on the part of Belgium, by
which, as Belgium is accused of philo-
Teutonic proclivities, the Germans will
profit. 1t is somewhat singular that,
given the inventive genius OF our coun-
trymen, America should have given
birth to nothing more important than
those balloon torpedoes which were SO
much talked about early in the year
1880, and which are by no means an
originality, as in 1872 a German inven-
tor proposed a balloon system to the
Russian government, by which Napo.
leon and all his staff were to have been
eliminated.
What the French have TO- succeeded
in doing it is impossible to know, as
they keep it a profound secret, and no
longer admit even native reporters to