AT TWENTY MILE RANGE.

Auckland Star, Volume XXXI, Issue 292, 8 December 1900, Page 2 (Supplement)

AT TWENTY MILE RANGE.

America has now secured a gun worthy of that great country. It has a diameter of ie inches —which conveys little meaning to the man in the street —and a range of nearly 21 miles —which conveys a very clear meaning, indeed. Moreover, it could send a shell over Pike's Peak, Colorado, if thai mountain were superimposed on "Mont Blanc. This way of describing the gun's capacity reminds one of the retired sea-captain, who, in letting lodgings, recommended an apartment on the ground that there was "plenty of room to swing a cat here"; to which the tenant, cautiously foreseeing an attempt to put up the price, remarked in a matter-of-fact way that as he did not keep cats, and would not iv any case desire to swing one, the room had no attractions 011 that account. Nobody would desire to send a shell to a height of five miles in actual warfare, and in an engagement with the Martians, or the inhabitants of any other planet, even this gun would be hopelessly outranged. As for its practical value, that will not be demonstrated until America has produced a gunner who can see clearly enough at twenty-mile range to hit something smaller than Pike's Peak, Colorado. At extreme range this weapon would do about as much damage as Edison's famous electric button, by which he was expected, according to the Yellow Press, to sink a hostile fleet while it was yet below the hori-on.