The age-herald., 1898-07-01
MACHINERY
 IN FIGHTING

lished in the United States and in Spain. But the fact is that such a comparison is a pretty good indicator. The proportion is about twenty-four such publications in our country to one in Spain. Therefore Spain will be whipped. And the reasoning will hold good even if she were a much strong CT nation.
 War is no longer a simple contest of strength and bravery. It is more a thing of skill and machinery And no people of Spain's scant technical literature can take rank as a fighting nation. Today the mili- tary success of people in time of war, a- most as much as their industrial success in time of peace, depends upon the develop- ment of the meehanical faculty. War is a combat of complicated machinery in the hands of more less skilful operatives. Other things not too unequal victory must be with the people of mechanical genius.
 From kfag-Jorgensen rifle to battle ship is long and varied series of complex instruments Of death. Upon the possession and the skillfu use of these depends tion's fighting power. Strength and bravery. though always important ele- ments. are longer controlling ones. War is machine fighting, and the nations must rank in power pretty much in ac- cordance with their aptitude for making and handling the complicated war con- trivances.
 The modern battleship is maze of inc tricate mechanism. Machinery loads, aims and fires machinery. Passing from com partment to compartment, one is bewilder- ed by the complexity of it all. Formerly war ship was manned by sailors; now it is manned by engineers, mechanics and e!ec- tricians. The story is told of the Scotsman who recently applied for service in the navy. After he had enlarged upon his qualifications and long experience as @ sailor he was taken below among the in- tricate machinery and asked if he could make this piece, adjust that one, and re- pair the other. When he found his way out he declared "They don't want sailors nowadays; what they want is dom black smiths" What they want certainly is men of marked mechanical aptitude, from arti- ficer to admiral.
 In meeting these requirements of fight ing nation England easily stands first. While she won her sway upon the seas by superior courage and hardlhood, she re- tains it today by her ability to build and effectively operate the most destructive of floating war machinery. The national traits which won her greatness have no connection with those which have secured its continuance. It has been her good for tune that when war was a struggle man to man her people proved race of fierce physical fighters and when war became a struggle between death-dealing machines Englishmen turned out cool, calculating, mechanical experts. British manufactur- CTS of firearms and great guns are past masters in the art, and are besieged With orders from other nations, while her docks for the building of war ships are the great naval workshop of the world.
 Among European nations France, Ger many and Italy rank next, about in the or der given. Fighting by machinery comes pretty natural to the first two at least. Both possess the mechanical faculty in high degree, though upon the whole the French are the finer engineers. Italy chai- lenges attention in this respect chiefly because of the qualifications for mechanical warfare she has shown under very unfavorable conditions. The Italians can both make and man the great fighting engines but, handicapped by internal dis sensions and an empty treasury, they are working against great odds.
 Russia ranks among the nations of least natural aptitude for the modern mode or fighting This Is fact that is overlooked in the discussion of the great world war, now supposed to be imminent. Whether we contemplate the outbreak as a pfomis- cuous struggle among nations, or as the final contest for supremacy between the two races, the Anglo-Saxon and the Siav' the enormous power of Russia must be taken with this limitation. It may be true that the Slav is to dominate the world' But if so it will be through first an alliance with part of the great machine-hghting nations against the others, and afterward divisions among these allies themselves. Even should the struggle be long delayed it is doubtful if the Russians could become proficient with the modern engines or oe- struction. At present amusing stories are told of Russian aptitude for this sort Of | thing by the British contractors who have | furnished the czar with war machinery, and then sent men to extricate his subjects 1 from the hopeless bewilderment oecasioned by their attempts to use it.
 Japan and China well illustrate the con- | trolling influence of machinery in warfare. | In sense both peoples are deficient in me- | chanical genius. But the Chinese hopeiess- 1 ly so and the Japanese only from west | ern standpoint. And even this shortcom, | ing is offset by an initiative faculty ap- l nroaching genuis. While modern war l mechanism would never have originated | in Japan, it is in good hands there. when her struggles with China began the gem | eral apprehension for the fate or poor ht.le Japan was not shared by those who un- derstood the two peoples and their apti- | tude for modern mechanical warfare.
  The United States and Spain furnish, m some respects, even better illustration or | the matter On the one hand @ nation of | inventors and natural mechanics-men Tn | whose hands machinery seems but part | of themselves. On the other hand, peo- | ple among whom mechanical genius is rare' | men who have adopted machinery because | civilization has adopted IL, but who gen- erally speaking, are unable to create it or | understand it.
 Both nations were unprepared. and the | first step was that of getting ready the en- | yinerv of war. To the one side this was a | comparatively easy task; to the other l scarcely possible one. The war came in 1 that form in which the machinery is most | determining. Out from the two sides moved the great sea monsters of modern | naval warfare Each was a terrible but l delicate and complicated mechanism. l Upon the land the first assault was to fall