The Saint Paul globe., 1904-05-29
SUNDAY, MAY %, 1904.
NEW ELEMENTS IN WARFARE.

NEW ELEMENTS IN WARFARE.
Two elements new at least in their
practical application to the art Of war
bid fair to revolutionize, If not entirely
to suppress it. Both of these are out
groWths of the advance In the produc-
ton of powerful explosives. The pos
sibility of secluding within a narrow
compass enough material to destroy
the biggest battleship afeat or to pros
trate an army, making the engine of
destruction at once easily portable and
easily concealed, will either make war
too costly to be borne or bring out
some methods of meeting this new
form of attack as yet undiseoverable.
Thus far in the war between Russia
have been substantially ineffective. The
old pitched battle of the seas Is no
longer to be expected. We should not
be surprised if that great running fight
off Santiago were the last of naval en-
gagements on a great scale that the
world is to see. The whole study Of
Russia and Japan has been to destroy
each others ships without coming to
blows between them, and their efforts
have been extraordinarily successful.
The loss which any battleship of either
power has been able to inf1ict upon the
other is a mere bagatelIe compared
with the destruction wrought by mines
and torpedoes. The worst of it is that
even those most intimately concerned
cannot, even after the fact, attribute
their losses accurately to the proper
source.
Nobody knows today, for instance,
whether the Petropavlovsk on the one
side and the Hatsuse on the other were
sent to the bottom by torpedoes or by
mines, and whether the deadly blow was
struck by the forces of the enemy or
by their own. What we do know is
that the mine and the torpedo are mas
ters of the Eastern seas. The Russian
squadron can exist only In it's land
locked harbor, and its Japanese assafl-
ant is safe only miles away in the open
sea. Between the two there lies
deadly zone Of submarine mines, men
acing friend and enemy alike, and MAX
ing attack and defense by the battle
ship equally fruitless. What concefv-
able reason can the nations find for
continuing to build these immense
structures OF steel for naval service at
the cost of from SS.0OO,OOO to double
that sum at least, when a few hundred
dollars worth of explosives is more
likely than not to send one to the bot
tom before it can protect a friend or
harm an enemy?
The art of aerial navigation has not
yet reached any such degree of per-
fectton as that of submarine work. 1t
has, nevertheless, gone sufficiently far
to convince US that the army on Nnd
will presently be as helpless beneath
the balloon freighted with explosives
as is the battleship floating over q
similar and equally deadly fate. The
time limit fixed by The Hague conven-
tion for prohibiting this method of
warfare has expired, and we NAV he
sure that no such agreement will be
renewed. Nor ought it to be. It Is
just as legitimate to use war balloons
as torpedo boats or mines. The
mightiest army ever collected, fur
nished with all the completest munf-
tions Of war that the world could nro-
vide. would be Ike q lot of rats ia q
trap If few airships only moderately
complete. just able to steer one straight
course over the congregated forces.
were to drop down few hundred
@eight Of some high grade explosive