The evening Caledonian. [volume] (St. Johnsbury, Vt.) 1918-1920, 1919-01-22

as things ere CON Is way, but
he weakens under the 49, defeat.
He lacks the ability to neerly
handle hin11 elf as an individuss =.
ter, and his courage, except in e
instances, is not up to standing the
gaff of losing fight
"The discovery of this new and
deadly gas of which I tell you opens
another field in which the German
had been supposed to be the leader,
but in which he must take back
seat to American inventive genius In
the field of chemistry the German is
like sailor who gets a great reputa-
tion by painstakingly forcing his ship
through a channel hiterto regarded
as impossible, but the American sails
straight out into the uncharted sea
and brings home the golden argosy of
discovery.
."Many great chemical discoveries
have been made by the Germans.
They are famous for their dyes, their
chemicals and formulas for this or
that curative compound. But why?
Because they had the patience-a
virtue in which their scientists excel
to plod along day after day and
week after week, aiming at goal
set clearly before them. The Ameri
can scientist is impatient of inaction
and delay, ignores set marks and dir
ects his energies into unknown realms
frequently making discoveries of am
azing Importance.
"Thus it was the gas. Germany
launched the gas warfare with all it's
horrors The civilized world con-
demned the practice, but sometimes
to fight fire successfully you must use
fire, and so the Allies and the United
States were compelled to adopt the
practice. It was comparatively
simple operation to reproduce the
various German gases, and after a
little time it was no great feat to
perfect mask that made them in
nocuous to our men.
"Then the American chemists got
busy, and in reproducing the German
gases they turned out product SO
markedly superior that our own
masks had to be changed and i'm
proved to make it safe for our own
men to use the gas. The various
gases used by the American toward
the end of the war were four times
as deadly as those used by the Ger
mans By that I mean that Ger
man gas mask was useful against
American gas less than one-fourth as
long as an American mask was i'm
peFvfous-@7tto othe-G efaalan ga as.=7777-=
"This may have been due in part
to the German situation with refer
ence to raw materials. Here we
have everything we need for making
the gases and the masks to neutrallze
their effects, while it is pretty we'll
known that Germany was short OF
some very essential elements. How
ever, that has nothing to do with this
/ discovery of ours in the line of gas.
It was perfected because some daring
spirits took their lives in their
hands and worked with certain COM
binations of chemicals that it has been
generally regarded as sudden and GER
tain death to handle.
"And even after the gas was per-
Ifected we, had stiff problem on our
hands. It was how to handle the
deadly stuff and how to get it safely
to the place where it could be used.
This hill lad just been surmounted
when the war ended, and so Fritz es-
capped real taste of what America
can do once she is started.
, "The Navy Department has just
: recently released the fact that the
! biggest and most effective cannon in
use in the field were made for the
!, United States navy. They are IA
inch weapons of so calibres, and hurl-
ed a 1900 pound shell for an effective
range of 80 miles. You know in times
= of peace i. takes more than a yeal
to build one of these huge guns. II
; so happened that two of them were
! finished not so long after war was
declared, but for some reason the
navy department found itself unable
= to use them, and at length consented
to allow them to be shipped te
France.
"But special locomotives and cars
9 had to be built before they could be
p of use, and locomotive builders ane
9 car makers outdid themselves in pro
Eviding these movable emplacements
r The guns were shipped from Phila
O. delphia, and there is reason to believ,
i that the Germans knew about them
h and the approximate date Of thei
shipment, because the ship on which
O. they were sent to France was torpe
4 doed when on her way back to thi
. country.
h at was at first intended to turn tn
4 guns over To England Tut the mari
# time and military situation made tn
v English unable to handle them, an,
+ as soon as General Pershing foun
J. out about them he asked to have then
sent to hin,.
nj "Their deadly accuracy of fire
@ proven by the fact that during tn
d allied advance toward Laon, after tn
ii battle of Chateau-T Thierry, aerial OBJ
j. ~