The times., 1898-05-06
THE TELEGRAPH IN WARFARE.
Tie vnIue of Experts i'm Tele-
Hraphy.

TIE ynIue of Experts i'm TeIe-
graphy.
The battle of Manila offers an illustra-
ton of the wisdom of having experts In
telegraphy and electrical engineering at
tached to every army or fleet. 1t ought
not to have been necessary to keep the
world so long in ignorance of what Com
modore Dewey had actually accomplish
ed If the electrical end of his establish
ment had been cared for as scrupulously
as it's strictly fighting end he could have
made his victory even more complete in
its moral effect by showing the Span
iards the hopelessness of a war against
so ingenious a people as ours.
That the electricians are appreciated at
home is. shown by the important position
given to the two expert telegraphers,
Thompson and Allen, at Key West. and
Mexwell of New York. They were put
in charge of the cable service at the
two most important points on the conti-
nent, not simply because they were men
of discretion and intelligence as well.
1t should be the care of every commander
of an army or fleet to have with him
a small corps of men who not only un-
derstand the working of the telegraph
key and read messages by sound, but are
in the way of repairing and emergency
work, which may be called for when no
outside aid can be procured. These men
should understand splicing wire and cable
in any condition and amid any surround
ings.
They should be of trained ingenuity in
running down and locating breaks in the
connection. They should have enough
sobriety of judgment to play the censor
III rhs.fy.
mands to send. They should be teIe-
graphic geographers as well as every
ching else, having at their fingers ends
the directions and functions of telegraph
lines all over the earth, for it sometimes
becomes of the very first Importance 20
send a message to the other side of the
enemys country without actually pass
ing through it.
The use of electricity in warfare has
grown very much within the last ten or
fifteen years. but the war between Spain
and the United States promises TO do
more TO illustrate the possibility of this
branch of science than has been dreamed
OF heretofore. Telegraphy and telephony
will both be called into play, to do what
has formerly been done by wig-wag sig
mails, sending dispatches by courier. etc.
Telegraph wire has been reduced so in
weight that a man can transport two
miles of isulated double conductor as
rapidly as a column of cavalry can move.
This includes the weight of the reel for
paying out the wire. as well as of the wire
itself The flying field telegraph and
telephone makes a kit weighing not TO
exceed thirteen pounds. and this includes
a dimnutive Morse key and buzzer so
that messages can be sent simultaneously
from both instruments.
We are likely also to try the phono-
graph as a dispatch vehicle. BY having
if captured by the enemy could not be
placed on a strange apparatus and made
to reproduce the sounds originally COM
mitted to it, the damage from losing
cylinder would not be so serious as that
from losing a dispatch written on paper.
The micrOphone. which can be set so as
to catch the sound of an approaching foe
when it is too faint to be heard by the
ordinary ear, is another ingenious device
which will be tested. The firing of guns,
the explosion of mines and tOrpedOes and
the control of a camera shutter when
pictures are to be taken from a kite or
balloon suspended in air over the enemy's
works are familiar uses of electricity
which will be developed and extended in
our martial operations this season.
We have at the head of our signal
corps, in Gen. Greely an officer whose
tastes are all in line with his professional
speciality. Nothing delights him more
than to experiment and invent new
methods in electrical field work In his
report of 1894 he drew attention to the
increasing value of the telephone in war
fare. with a special reference to the war
between China and Japan, which was
then under way. All late wars he said.
indicate that electrical connections are
Indispensable to the success of any army
operating on a base apart from the gen
eral telephone system. He recorded the
marvellous success of experiments made
in the army with the single uninsulated
bimetallic wire stretched on the ground
through wet grass. over which whis-
pered conversation was conducted
through telephones half a mile apart
When the wire was partly buried the tele>
phone could not be held close TO the ear
without discomfort
The war in the East furnished the gem
eral with an excellent object lesson Just
at that time, when Congress was in par
ticularly niggardly mood and was pro-
posing to cut down appropriations To an
extent which threatened to ruin the sig
nal corps, for he was able to point to an
instance where the Japanese signal and
telegraph corps, on the day following the
battle of Ping-Yang. ran into that city a
flying telegraph line from Seul a dis
tance of seventy miles. The military bal
loon is another subject to which Gen
GFeeIy mas gwen fnuCn study. 1t was he
who first officially drew the attention of
the Government to the usefulness of the
balloon when fighting is going on inside
of a big city. What is true in case OF
riots is quite as applicable to fighting be-
tween contending armies for the posses
sion of city, or a wood or a vantage
ground in which large rocks and deep Gull
lies afford an opportunity for an enemy
TO make sudden movements unseen.
The military telegraphers and electri-
clans of the civil war have received no
end of encOmiums from the general. un-
| der whom they performed their profes-
sional services, some of these officers go
ing so far as to say that they owed their
success in no small measure to the boys
at the wire" With the development of
| all forms of electrical invention during
the generation which has elapsed since
then, what may not be expected from the
same source in the present war?
Thomas L. Boggess, a boat builder, and
! Thomas h. Sanders, an engineer. were
arrested last night by Policemen Bran
son and Green. They are charged with
ha fShf