New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1916-08-13

this fatuous blindness the Titan,
struck the berg, and your ships 20 abou.
making the best thing they can out O,
the use of pattern Learned from Our
book, but here most enormously an.
plied) through avoiding the onlp CON.
cealing color, Uhite. The case is perfect.
ly comic. On land many different com.
binations of landscape colors, if only in
contrasted patches, would serve to con.
ceal, but out on the open sea there ia
Just one color, and you feec ~ trv II;
The whole scene is atuuys, in cloudy
weather, just one series of whites in
their normal light-and-shade relations
and vertical white plane out there
shares and initiates all the light-and.
shade changes Of the clouds. You make
a well-wisher weep. Half of the ships
that have been torpedoed would still be
afoat had the naval experts perceived
that there is science Of appearances
and that science does not form part Of
a naval experts training. One would
think that some naval expert could be
found with genius enough to perceive
this, and get for his country the help Of
a scientific man whose specially is con.
cealing coEoration.
1t is as comical as if people couldn't
count or calculate. Even after seeing
their white ship invisible (most of the
time) through the thirty to one cloudy
hours round Britain, the moment they
see the sun make one side of her too
bright for one hour they go back atonce
to the gray that keeps the ship black,
conspicuous figure practically all the
time in all weathers.
This moment of sun seems to put 70
rout the naval powers of thought! Let
us accept this one hour of bright shine
on one side, and let any one tkG why not
to pay this price for having the ship
practically invisible (most Of Lee time)
through all the cloudy weather round
Britain.
The only question which is here with.
in the field of naval experts is whether
they prefer mere disguise of ship to
having her invisible nine hours out Of
twelve in cloudy weather. CLOUDY
weather being, at least, as any one will
admit, easily predominant through the
greater part of the year around Great
Brittany The question of what color
can vanish and what one can't belongs
to that science of appearances whichk
the painters speciality.
Your gray-and- black patterned craft
Except in the rare moments Of being
seen by a spectator at the precise angle
during sunshine, where the shine OF the
sun on her paint strikes his eye) is al
rays a dark figure against the back
ground. The only advantage you get by
this patterning is to make the vessel
ambiguous in appearance. Now, whether
the navy prefer this ambiguity to nine
hours a day of invisibility, with still
better and very simple device for ambi-
guilty (Which | could describe to YOU the
other three hours, is their affair, but
there is only one color that 10hen set
mp vertical is light enough not to be q
dark figure against the sky beyond, and
that color is 1Ohite. Here | am the au-
thority, but if you study those models,
set up absolutely with VerticaL nedidn
planes, in CLOUDY WEATHER, on
some unshadowed house-top high
enough among it's neighbors to escape
neighboring shadows, and to enable you
to see them against the bottom Of the
distant sky itself, and not against some
terrestrial object, you cannot fail to dis
cover the principle in question. 80
greatly does it darken any color to set II
up edgeWise q speak, of course, of out
of-doors) that Uhite itself, so placed,
becomes the Uery gray you are trying
to get, and all other colors thus set up
become hopelessly too dark.
Proud of their navies, people fire.
ouentlv point to some inky dark cruls-