Officers of the marine corps are on the same footing as to rank and privileges as similar grades in the army. Of late a movement has been inaugurated to give them a higher degree of technical knowledge, and applicants for an officer's position in the corps must spend a year or more in the Annapolis school for the instruction of commissioned officers of marines. The increasing governmental appreciation of the value of the marine corps as a branch of the military establishment is found in the fact that whereas, a few years ago, the ranking officer of marine could have no higher rank than colonel, Gen. Elliott, the new commandant, has the rank of brigadier general and has fully 8,000 men under his direction. Of this full strength several hundred are boys, ranging from fourteen to twenty one years of age, who have been enrolled as buglers and drummers, and two of whom are attached to every United States war vessel carrying marines.

Vol.9-85

WEAPONS OF DESTRUCTION.

BY CHARLES C. FITZMORRIS.

[Charles C. Fitzmorris, journalist; was born May 1, 1884, at Fort Wayne, Ind.; educated at the public schools; became a member of the staff of the Chicago American in 1902; has been staff correspondent for that paper and is author of many articles for newspapers and magazines.]

Maxim, the inventor of the Maxim rapid fire gun, Maximite, a terrible explosive, and other vehicles of destruction, replied to a criticism that his genius might be better employed than in devising new weapons for war, by saying that inventors of terrible weapons were the most effective peacemakers. In explanation he added that when warfare means annihilation to both combatants, universal peace will follow, never to be interrupted by strife. The Russian-Japanese war, with its awful carnage on both sides, and a knowledge of the more terrible and modern engines of war would seem to indicate that the time is ripe for the appearance of the dove of peace, bringing the olive branch to all the nations of the globe.

The genius of those whose efforts are directed to the development of the machinery of war has left no known place to which warfare may not be extended in its most terrible form. The land is guarded by cannon that have range of almost twenty four miles. Battleships, torpedo boats and other forms of marine craft carry war to all the oceans, while the depths of the sea are patrolled by submarine boats and serve to conceal mines that destroy whatever they touch.

The essential of all the arms of war, with hardly an exception, is ammunition. Gunpowder in its early form has been supplanted by newer explosives of far greater power. Of the developments in this line probably the most important has been the invention of smokeless powder. The quality that is implied by its name is not its chief qualification. In the old forms of powder about forty per cent of the charge remained as solid matter, interfering with the next charge, preventing rapid firing and of course making impossible the development of all the energy of the powder. Added to all these faults the old form of powder produced a great cloud of

smoke, that had the double effect of interfering with the operation of the weapon and plainly indicating its position to the enemy. Smokeless powder has done away with the smoke, and the explosion transforms almost all of the charge into gas to drive the projectile, making possible the use of larger projectiles-that is to say longer ones-in guns, without increasing the bore.

New explosives, each more deadly and more powerful than its predecessor, are being manufactured by inventors all over the world. There are already many that are far more powerful than the guncotton and nitroglycerine that were brought forth a few more than ten years ago. Chief among the new explosives is nitrocellulose a mixture of nitroglycerine and other explosives-which is used in the larger cannon to-day on land and sea. We have also cordite, made from nitroglycerine, guncotton and petrolatum; melinite, made of picric acid and guncotton; lyddite, almost the same as melinite; bellite, made of ammonium nitrate and nitrobenzine; indurite, of guncotton and indurated nitrobenzine; maximite, dunnite, and a half score of others the composition of which is kept secret by the manufacturers.

Smokeless powder, which has reached a high stage of development, is used in the manufacture of ammunition for every class of small arms, and, with other inventions, has made them factors to be reckoned with as well as the larger weapons.

The most deadly weapon of the pistol form in the world is the American magazine pistol, weighing twenty three ounces and measuring seven inches in length. Cartridges, filled with smokeless powder, are stored in the handle of the pistol and are fed automatically, the recoil throwing the used shell out and a new cartridge into place, as long as the trigger is worked and there are cartridges in the magazine. Another of the modern forms of small arms is the rifle with a magazine attachment, similar to the magazine of the pistol, but larger and containing more cartridges. The form of rifle until recently used in the United States army was the Krag-Jorgenson magazine rifle. The Mauser and Lee-Metford and the new Springfield rifle are other well known forms. In all these rifles the recoil of the cartridge fired first sets a mechanism

into operation that automatically throws back the trigger, ejects the old shell and pushes a fresh cartridge into place as often as the weapon is fired or until the supply in the magazine is exhausted. The bullet used in these rifles is long and narrow, steel tipped and of great penetrative power. The new Springfield rifle has a range of five miles, the bullet having a velocity of 2,300 feet per second leaving the weapon or sufficient to drive it through four and a half feet of white pine.

An instrument that has added to the effectiveness of the rifle is the hyposcope, a device containing mirrors and fastened to the stock of the rifle behind the back sights, which enables the marksman to aim accurately with his head a foot or more beneath a rampart or other protection. This invention was used extensively and with uniform success during the Boer

war.

The rapid fire gun, which is a form of rifle on a larger scale, and the Gatling, Maxim rapid fire, and other forms of weapons, all similar to these in their construction and operation, are regarded as among the most useful of the modern war weapons.

The rapid fire gun, of the Maxim and similar makes, fires bullets in a perfect hail and is discharged by turning a crank that feeds the bullets into the breech in a string, the recoil of an explosion of one bullet throwing the next into place and discharging it. Machine guns that fire bullets from a series of barrels, as the Gatling gun, have been highly developed. The modern Gatling has ten barrels which are loaded and discharged at the rate of several hundred shots a minute. Improved guns working on the same principles have discharged more than a thousand bullets a minute, but the best is constructed to fire from 250 to 500 shots every sixty seconds.

Improvements in methods of steel making have enabled inventors and gun manufacturers to develop the cannon to a point where a range of twenty four miles has been attained in practice, although this is of course impractical in warfare. The new methods of steel making have resulted in gains of fifty per cent or even more in strength, for the same weight and forgings are made with as great as 70,000 pounds elastic strength and about 130,000 pounds ultimate or breaking strength.

The early cannon-such as the ones used during the Civil

war-besides being much smaller than the cannon that are possible of construction nowadays, was capable of discharging only a comparatively small shell with a small charge of powder. It was thought to be doing exceedingly well when a projectile attained a velocity of 1,500 feet per second leaving the muzzle. The first improvement in this gun came when an inventor wrapped a hoop of iron around the barrel and breech; and this innovation proved so successful that the practice of making guns by shrinking one hoop above the other-resulting in the built-up gun-displaced almost entirely for a time the old method of casting guns. This gun, proving the standard for many years, attained as high as 3,000 feet per second as the initial velocity of the shell. Mr. Longridge, of England, suggested a wire wound gun that proved even more successful than the weapon wrapped with steel hoops, owing to the fact that steel attains its greatest tensile strength when drawn out into small sizes. Other guns similar to these described are known as the Brown segmental gun, which is composed of a small segmental core outside of a thin steel tube, the whole wrapped with wire and covered by an outer jacket.

All modern cannon are fitted with the latest appliances that make for rapid firing. Electrical devices discharge the weapon, open the breech, and perform other work of the gun much more rapidly than would otherwise be possible. Telescopic sights, permitting great accuracy of aim and a mechanism to make up the recoil of the gun are other improvements. In the 12- and 13-inch guns the recoil is taken up by hydraulic cylinders, the platform upon which the man who operates the weapon stands, moving backwards with the gun. The 12inch guns of the new battleships recoil from thirty three to thirty five inches and have metal springs to return them to their former position after firing.

Many enormous guns have been built, some of them capable of throwing projectiles for many miles, but the enormous charge required to operate the large weapons strains them, and, in a very short time, renders them practically useless after a few hundred rounds have been fired. Naval men as a rule now prefer the 12-inch and smaller guns to the larger cannon.

The cost of manufacturing the large 16-inch gun in place at