The Birmingham age-herald. [volume] (Birmingham, Ala.) 1902-1950, 1916-09-29
STRANGE ENGINES OF WAR

blast the hosts of Israel gave a great
shout and the walls fell flat according to
the Biblical account in the Book of
Joshua. Those who endeavor to explain
all miracles on the theory that they are
the result of extraordinary applications
of the natural law have seen in thiS
remarkable event a demonstration of the
vast destructive power of sympathetic
vibration-the same principle which has
been known to shake to it's very founda-
tion great bridge of steel and con-
crete when dog trots across it.
Another arms oddly of Biblical inter-
est was the ruse employed by Gideon,
leader of only 800 Israelites who sue
cessfully engaged a vast host of INDIAN
ties and Amalektes that lay along in tho
valley like grasshoppers for multitude,
and their camels were without number
as the sand by the seaside for multi
tCde' Gideon's engines of destruction
We're 800 trumpets, 800 empty pitchers and
300 lamps within the pitchers AS the
enemys camp was approached during the
night the pitchers were smashed the
lamps held aloft in the left hand, while
terrifying blasts from the 300 trumpets
spread CONSERVATION and terror among
the sleepers who, in darkness, imagined
that they had been attacked by a great
army. The result was wholesale slaugh-
ter among themselves while the follow
ers of Gideon watched.
Greek fire is a term which has been
applied to various compounds through a
succession of centuries going as far back
as 424 B. c., when at the siege of Delium
cauldron filled with sulphur pitch and
charcoal was placed against the walls
of the city, ignited and the flames inten-
sified by bellows attached to a hollow
tree trunk. The most famous of the
rA11y
by the architect Callinicus during the
reign of Constantine Pogonatus. This
particular engine of destruction was
known as wet fire, on account of it's
property of bursting into flame when
wetted. Thrown from siphons, it fell
upon the ships of the Saracens causing
them to burst into flames, and thus Con-
stantinople was saved to the Byzantine
emperors for the time being $685.
Probably more far-reaching in it's eff
feet than any other engine of war was
the Introduction of gunpowder on the
battlefield. 1t was one of the most po-
tent factors contributing to the over
throw of the great feudal system, for it
destroyed the superiority of the armored
knight over the yeoman foot soldier, and
as Carlyle has rightly said: 1T made all
men of the same height Following the
use of gunpowder in small arms came
the invention and development of the
cannon, weapon which was employed
with destructive effect against the walls
of Constantineple when this historic city
finally fell into the hands of the Mo-
hammedans in 1853.
1.-THE aeroplane, the Zeppelin. and the
ST bmarine have been developed gradually
in times Of peace preparatory for war,
and are the products of many minds. Not
so the iron-clad Merrimac and the tur-
reted Monitor which appeared suddenly
and almost simultaneously on the horizon
civil war.
THE poisonous gases employed in
trench warfare during the present Euro
pean conflict may be viewed as a deadly
of naval warfare during the American
development of the ludicrous stink-pot
weapons used by the Chinese for ages"