The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1897-05-09

tONory Talroad tracks, under the pro-
legtloh OF darkness. A hole in the ground
VIII furnish safe protection for the piece if
II Is mounted on a disappearing carriage,
ana II can be used as effectively as the
great artillery within the fortifcations
APpFoaches Will be made by night or I'M
oer the protection of timber, and intrench-
tilehts Will be thrown up by the advancing
Iorces until they make the assault. There
VIII pe great many night assaults There
we're some notable night assaults in our
ctVn war, and the night assault was one
OF Skobeleff's favorite methods of attack"
Inc dynamite gun, the balloon, and all
otner modern military inventions-what
part will they play in the conhict?'
rhey have in Europe a kind of powder
very much like dynamite which they fire
from gun The composition is a secret
me dynamite gun as we know it has not
peen a perfect success. One which our
Iortlncations board tested exploded, and
the one sent TO Cuba met the same fate.
me Held telegraph and the signaling ma
chlnery will play an important part AS
10 the balloon, its use in war is not new
us practcability was tested during the
siege of Paris. Experiments have been
made to show at what elevation it is safe.
ana with what shot it can be reached most
effectively, but it has not demonstrated
great value for the purpose of warfare yet
Ihat latest instrument of locomotion, the
bicycle, is yet to have it's first practical
test. But all these are matters of minor
Importance. The great engines of conflict
Will be the small-bore magazine rifle the
machine gun, the eIght-inch, thirteen-inch
and the siXteen-inch guns, with their huge
proJectues and their disappearing car
rlages, the mortars and the torpedoes
THESE, the skill to handle them, and the
money to pay for munitions of war will
determine the next great conflict
harN l.
ed in war it will be found necessary to ed
ucate new set of commanding officers.
by education" he continued II mean
the training that comes only with exper-
fence. There care to-day in the United
states men who fought in more hard en-
gagements than any of the generals of
Napoleon l. But these are men who went
through the kindergarten and the academy
and the normal school of experience after
the war began? One reason for the pro-
traction of our civil war was that the ar
mics of both the north and south were
raw material or undisciplined and mex
perlenced forces commanded by men who,
as rule, were without experience. Bragg,
Robert h. Lee, Sidney johnson, Joe John
ston and Stonewall Jackson on one side,
and Grant, Sherman and their associates
on the other, were men who had never seen
great battle or commanded a division.
For the first three years the armies and
their commanders were learning the art
of war. Even the details of camp life were
new to the soldiers. They had to learn how
to cook, how to bivouac, how to march,
how to drill, and how to fight If we had
had the preparation for fighting which
most of the European nations now have,
the civil war would have been finished
much more quickly. Now we have a great
many men of wide experience among US
But they are growing older. In a few
years they will all have passed away.
Misunderstanding muskets were used
chiefly on both sides in the civil war, al
though breech-loaders were in use before
1860. Our army should have been equipped
with breech-loaders in the last war Arm
les are Slow to adopt anything new, and
1t was not until the war was nearly ended
that the breech-loader was used to any
extent. Before that time our soldiers bit
the cartridge and drove the bullet down on
the powder win a ramrod. Now our
army is equipped with a modern magazine
rife carrying bullet about as large
AROUND as a pencil, and with the aid of
smokeless powder sending that bullet
three miles effectively. The rifles are
sighted for a mile. They will carry that
distance to an individual mark But oper-
ating against a mass of men, they can
be sent three miles with sufficient force
to kill, If they strike a man in a vital
of from three to six miles, while our guns
thirty-three years ago We're not effective
a much more than 1000 yards. Our
heavy artillery is proportionately more ef-
fective. 1t has been calculated that the
eight-inch gun throws a projectile with
an initial force which would raise a war
ship one foot into the air. The force of
the shot from the mouth of the thirteen
inch gun would raise a battleship twenty
feet into the air. We are now having
made at the Wattervliet arsenal, for use
in coast defence work, a sixteen-inch gun.
1t has not yet been decided where it will
be mounted. Italy has even larger guns
on her ships-seventeen-inch guns
I suggested that the faculty armies
have of making haste slowly in adopting
new ideas was justified, if the criticisms
of the small bore rife were we'll found
ed Last summer several French author-
ties attacked the new rifle. They said
that the purpose of a rifle ball was to
stop the soldier shot. In the Chitral
expedition, it was reported, men who were
struck with bullets from the new rifles
went on lighting. unconscious of the
wound The same report came from Ably s.
sinia, where the Italians suffered so Sc
rious a defeat. Finally, in the Jameson
raid, the small bore rifle was said to have
done little execution. A man shot through
the liver on the Chitral expedition. it was
said, got well in a week. man shot
in the ankle, knee, loins and head, show
ing six bullet wounds, was able to walk
to the ambulance and was well In few
days. Meneleks men kept on fighting af-
ter they had been shot through.
Gen Miles thought these criticisms were
not wei. founded. Possibly some of those
big, burly blacks" he said. were not
stopped promptly by the bullets-perhaps
because some Of them were pushed on by
70 7
you hit a man on the heart he will stop
pretty quickly. And, for my part. ! would
rather have chance at five men with
small bullets than at one man with a
large one"