Atlanta semi-weekly journal. (Atlanta, Ga.) 1898-1920, 1916-05-16
LEWIS MACHINE GUN
WAS FIRST OFFERED
To j. s. GOVERNMENT
Army Ordnance Board Could
Not See Its Great Value as
an Implement Of War; So
They Rejected 1t


WASHINGTON. D. c., May 1S.-Here
is the story of how the greatest small
arm invention of the age was lost to
the United States army.
1t is the story or the Lewis machine
gun.
1t is a story we common people are
not supposed even to know about Ar
my officers are trying to shroud 1t in
a tangle of evasions. For at the very
time when their preparedness cry is
being answered throughout the land.
this tabooed tale casts grave suspicion
on certain officers own past methods
of preparedness.
Are the new legions of trained cit
liens which, in the name of prepared
ness, America is likely to raise, going
to be moved down helpless and useless
in the event of war, just because our
ordnance authorities have neglected
their own grave duties in the matter
of enthusiastically the duties of
supplying a great reserve of proper mu-
nitions of war;
Of all the forms of munitions now
being used in Europe, the Lewis ma
chine gun, the air-cooled, lightweight.
rapid-fire terror, invented by an Amer
lean army officer, has proved one of
the greatest marvels.
Gently drove their men to slaughter liz
a certain desperate attack just to cap
ture intact Lewis machine gun so
they might copy it for their own use
has suddenly awakened America to the
tremendous value of this weapon which
our own military authorities long ago
had the first opportunity to consider
and the stupidity to reject!
Russia bought the Lewis gun for So.
vast popular subscription. Germany
her own soldiers! And United States ar
my officers didn't want it when it was
offered to them for nothing!
The most successful machine gun now
used in Europe is the Lewis. Like the
two other leading machine guns, the
Hotchkiss and the Maxim, 1t was in
vented in the United States. And
also like the Hotchkiss and the Maxim
lit was promptly rejected by the
United States.
Aside from several hundred of an old
err type, the United States army now has
SIT Benet-Mercier machine guns to
show for an expenditure of three-quar-
tiers of a. million dollars! And those
guns won't work. They jammed at Co
Iumbus. They have damned time and
time again and there are official docu-
ments in Washington to prove 1T. In
test at Sparta, Wis, the commanding
officer reported. that his six machine
guns were all out of commission in five
minutes, and the same number of rifle
men could have done better execution in
that period!
The invention of the machine gun Is
exclusively an American achievement,
yet we are the only frst-class- nation
on the globe that has no workable ma
chine guns. The board of ordnance and
fortification theoretically, in accordance
with the. acts of congress establishing
it and appropriating money for it, should
supervise the selection and purchase of
our machine guns. For the past three
years $3.50, 600 to $4,000 has been ap-
propriated by congress for the purchase
of machine guns, but our chief of ord
nance, Brig. Gen. William CroZier, the
moving spirit of the board of ordnance,
has bought not a single machine gun
during that period. on the ground that
no satisfactory type had been found.
And all the while, the worlds greatest
machine gun was at our disposal!
1t was in 1911 that Colonel Isaac N.
Lewis of the coast artillery first offered
his air-cooled gun to the United States.
The following year Captain Charles
DeForest Chandler, one of our earliest
army birdmen. took a Lewis machine
gun-he had never fired one before that
day-up in an aeroplane from College
Park, Md, and from an elevation of coo
feet, hit his target with every one of
the AZ shots in the magazine,
1t was the first time a machine gun
had ever been fired from an aeroplane.
Scientists all over the country hailed
the exploit as epoch-making. 1t was
t;,Fen for granted that the United States
would adopt the gun at once. But the
gun was not even officially tested until
September. 1913, when a board at
Springfield, Mass, tested It,, General
Crozier himself firing the gun The ex-
tractor broke six times. 1t was evil
IDENTIFY a flaw in the material, and in no
wise a fault in the design. Colonel
Lewis, A poor man, had already raised
$4,000 for the development of his gun.
lie had not been able to afford the high