The Press., 1891-04-02
Number 1.

elan, it fails at length, and is resolved in not having 8 gun to beat them with. There is where shame is coming. We are in no.s danger from land invasion. To be sure we have no instructed, drilled army, but we could rapidly contribute one. That is thing that comes nearer the possibili- ty of extemporized effort than any other effort of defense or warfare. We can ex- temporize rapidly brave men and supply any deficiencies in the efficiency of the in- dividual soldier by the extraordinary mul- titude and weight, by the brute power of the men, summoned.
 Senators say that some of these things will be antiquated, obsolete by and by. The senator from Missouri referred to the experiments made by little alloy slightly of steel with aluminium to give it addi- tional strength, and all that. It is noth- ing but one of the little incidental im- provements going on from time to time. That does not affect the great question at all, the necessity fol defense, nor the gen. eral character of guns we should prepare. We do not know what will be done, of course. There will be extraordinary in- ventions; there will be great advances made in the art of throwing these enorm- ous bolts of dynamite; and in the art of submarine explosion and attack great ad- vances will be made. But, sir, no gun has been made that is entirely obsolete, entirely useless. They are obsolete in the common use of that word, because we have taken something better; but the old-fashioned carronade in the war of 1912, or say, 6 or 7 inches calliber, a clumsy thing about 6 feet long, is not ob- solete. It will throw 6-inch shell now, which is big enough for some purposes, and throw it very considerable distance
 The time is never coming when one of these high-power steel guns throwing a 500-pound bolt of hardened steel ten miles will be obsolete. It will never be obso- lete until the laws of matter are reversed and 500 pounds dropping mile will not hurt. Then these things will become ob- solete. Not one of these guns will ever be useless. do not care what the pro- gress of invention may be. They will always carry miles; they will always penetrate a certain thickness in the side of ship; and the limit of ship armor is practically reached; anything further makes the ship unwieldy and unsafe. You cannot carry armor sufficient to re. sist the power of the modern weapon Man can make nothing that man cannot destroy, and destruction as a rule keeps ahead of defense.
 No, sir; we have seen in my judgment ] the last of the extraordinary experiments 1 of very large and very heavily armoreG ships. They will be made smaller; some l of them will be rapid and will expect tt take blows, expect to be shot clear through and through, as men do when they go tt I war. They do not expect to encase them selves in armor which can not be pene
 trated. They went to that extent once and got so that the knight had to be help ed, I had almost said with derrick, o1
 his horse. So heavy was their armol
 that the men were practically useless, ane
 then men with nothing but short jacke
 and pair of trousers-stark naked men | almost-darted under and stabbed tn,
 horse or stabbed the man in undefendec
 places. There are plenty of examples
 like that. So, by and by, men will com,
 to the conclusion that you can not abso
 lutely defend yourself, and that in war i
 is inevitable that somebody is hurt, ant we will find lighter ships with tremendou
 power of aggression, and will expect tt
 take our blows.
 | think senators make a great mistake
 in standing in the way of coast defense
 as the senate has done to large extent.