Los Angeles herald., 1910-02-07

ia a - back with a feeling of Sc
AszaaeaAsea. curity from danger of for
eign invasion. At the time
of the Spanish-Amerioan war the ma
tion found itself all but unprotected
in this manner. Should the foe have
been one of the really strong powers
instead of poor, weakened, enervated
| Spain, there is no telling how serious
the results to the cities of the seaboard
might have been. New York, Bos-
ton, Washington, Baltimore, Norfolk,
Charleston, New Orleans, Galveston
and San Francisco were all open to at
tack. Only obsolete guns and made
quate forts protected them, aside from
the protection they were offered by the
navy.
But after the peace of Paris the mill
tary authorities of America began to
see how different it might have been
If we had met a stronger nation in the
arbitrament of the sword. They felt
that we would ultimately have won,
no matter what the power against us,
but that it might have been with every
seaboard city of the Atlantic coast in
ashes as a part of the price of victory.
1t was lesson to them, and the Span
ishAmerican war was no sooner closed,
and the stocktaking of its results ended,
until the military minds at Washing
ION DGRdn TO D6SllT themselves " ll4C
creation of a modern system of coast
l>defenses.
Out of their planning has grown one
of the worlds most complete systems
for defending the coasts of a nation
from attack. From Portland, Me-, to
the Puget sound every harbor is being
put in such shape that the fleet does
not exist that might hope to gain an
entrance With the complete systei:.
of high-powered guns, mortars, search
lights, fire control, and everything else
that tends to give a fort advantage
over a battleship, it seems that the
last word is being said in the way of
preparation for possible trouble. Even
the necessary munitions of war are
being gathered together to be held in
reserve for the time when they may be
needed.
When the voyagers of the world sail
into our harbors they see froWning
forts of stone standing like sentinels
on guard. To the uninitiated they look
dreadfully dangerous and formidable,
vet they are only the relics of a bygone
age in warfare. They are in reality
more dangerous than open ground, as
the splintering of the stone would do
more damage to the inmates of the fort
than the missiles of the enemy. Where
the stone forts, but in great guns bur
led from sight behind terraces of sand
covered with naught but an unoffend-
ing green grass.
Behind those little hillocks lies the
safety of every coast city in the ma
tion. These hidden mortars and guns
NAV be relied on to sink any fleet the
world may send against them. The
mortars are gigantic short -muzzled
guns that may shoot at any angle short
of straight up, and when it is known
that they have a record of seventy
hits out of a possible hundred shots
it will be seen that they have busi-
ness way of doing things.
The big guns with the long muZzles,
the ones which must be leveled at the
enemy, are mounted on disappearing
gun carriages The gun is loaded,
aimed according to the directions given
bv the fire control station, and then
raised into position. When it is fired
the recoil throws it back and down
into the pit. There it Is loaded, driven
up into place again and fired. Thus
the operation is repeated until the
enemy is at the bottom of the sea, or
a flag of truce flies at the masthead.
Most of these guns now in use are of
twleve-inch bore. They can begin
pouring steel into an enemy that is
ten miles or more away, and at five
miles they have frequently registered
a hundred hits out of a hundred shots,
most of them being SO accurately aimed
that they would go through a hatch
without disfiguring the paint on the
sides. Two of these guns are placed
in a single pit, and together they can
keep a shot in the air nearly all the
time, their combined capacity being
ghot auprV fiffpQO seconds
1t has been found that the twelve