BIS GUNS

Evening Star, Issue 21636, 3 February 1934, Page 24

BIS GUNS

ANCIENT AND MODERN With the idea of disarmament uppermost in my mind I came to that curious building at Woolwich, all among Army huts and recruits learning their business, and dank nonds and rank grass, known as the Ro- : tunda, ns odd a structure as I have ever ’ seen in an occidental country (writes E. V. j Lucas, in the London 'Sunday Times'). But it offers no help to the world's most pressing problems, because the disarmament has all been done, every weapon collected here being obsolete. None the less, such an assemblage of evidence oi the pains taken bv man to kill man cannot but provoke thought, the range extending from flint-arrow heads and bronze spear heads through swords and rapiers and catapults and blunderbnses to the famous French “ 75 " which did so much damage in the Great, War—as a gun at the front and (for one was named after it) as a cocktail in Paris. Perhaps the strangest of all these devices fur removing the divine gift of life is Mallet's mortar, made to discharge a 36in shell, one of which is on view, a sphere as large as the ball that performing elephants push about. The inventor, Robert Mallet, was a man of extraordinary ingenuity, normally an ironfounder, but multiplying his interests in every direction. He designed bridges, he supplied Dublin with water from the Dodder, he built the Fastnet Rock lighthouse, he surveyed for railways, he wrote hundreds of scientific papers, many hooks, and edited the ‘ Practical Mechanics’ Journal.’ When the Crimean War was threatening he made two gigantic mortars to take a shell containing from 21 to 26cwt of explosives, with which to blow the Russians to shreds and tatters, but the end came •in 1856, before they could be used for that important purpose. On July 28, 1858, however, one was pacifically fired, the shell travelling 2,759yd5. How tame beside Big Bertha, the secret gun which, in the spring of 1918, from a distance of 70 miles dropped shells into Paris. As against Mallet's 20-odd hundredweight, Bertha's shells weighed only 2641 b. Had they been heavier they could ‘not have travelled so far; but they were sufficient to send the richer Parisians to seek safety in the south, all oh the pretext that business called them thither. All, that is, save one; for it is told that when one day the throng on the platform of the Quai d’Orsay was joined by Sacha Guitry, the actor and dramatist, and he was asked what he was doing there, he replied; "I’m going to Biarritz, too. But I'm not going for the same reason all of you are. I’m going because I’m frightened.” None of the great gunmakers seem to have been trained to their work. Robert Mallet was a scientist inquirer who devised his mortar as a passing incident in his career. Richard Jordan Gatling began as a cotton planter in North Carolina, and afterwards became a doctor, but all his life was scheming out various kinds of mechanical assistance for mankind. He invented a screw propeller for steamboats; he invented machines for sowing seeds, a machine for breaking hemp, and a steam plough. Not till the Civil War broke out did lie turn his attention to ordnance, and the gun that boars his name was. like' Mallet's mortar, only just ready when hostilities ceased. Since then, however, Gatlings have come into their own. Sir Hiram Maxim, who also has a rapid-fire gun to his name, began as a coach builder in New England, then was a shipbuilder’s draughtsman with a special private interest in the problems of illumination, and at the end of his life was experimenting with an aero-" plane. “ DO NOT TOUCH." To few museums can the term cheery be applied; but I should guess that there is not another in the world quite so forlorn as the Rotunda, especially on a moist November day, and probably 1 should have been wise to have been deterred by the rows and vows of camion on the ground outside, with blackened asters and michaolmas daisies expiring among them, and have picked my way back. But, made of sterner stuff than that, 1 entered, to find myself the . only living soul save two dejected attendants, one of whom, there being no catalogue (although the exhibits are numbered I, 1 invited to explain the chief treasures, discovering those to be his own personal memories of f lie air raids on ' the neighbourhood during the war. These he nar'rated to me with so much of a hero’s relish that the place was momentarily warmed and lightened, and the chill, struck first by its emptiness and inhumanity and afterwards by the notice repeated a thousand times, "Do not touch,” was removed. What kind of visitor wants to touch, on a bleak November day, the cold metal of ordnance, i cannot imagine, nor what damage could any finger-tip inflict; but there liu- notices are, in dreary iteration. Among other exhibits that 1 refrained 'from touching was a bombard from Bodiam Castle, with a model bombardier touching it off; a pelcrara of the. time of Edward 1.; a mantrap from Deal Castle (see how thorough this museum is), an axe welded by (lie Chartists at Manchester in 1836, and a wooden cannon for firing buckshot, used hy the Canadian rebels in 1837. There is also a piece of ordnance that took a return ticket; two brass howitzers on a carriage that were given by George HI. to the Emperor of China in 1792, and when found in a Peking palace in the war of 1860 were brought back again to Woolwich. An odd symmetrical adventure. The Rotunda has been a traveller, too. It was built not to illustrate on Woolwich Common the rapidity with which ietha' weapons arc superseded by weapons st' 1 more lethal, but as one of the pavilions in St. James's Park when, in 1814, the Prince Regent entertained the allied Sovereigns and felicitated with them on the downfall of Napoleon, then apparently safely locked up on the island of Elba. In addition to the Rotunda and other structures built fo l ' the occasion there was a Chinese hvir' -r--across the lake, with a pagoda in the middle, of it for the display of lirov. orks This bridge, designed by John Nash, remained till 1825 and was On destroyed: the Rotunda was removed In Woolwich. I know not when, but when yon stand in it and are 100 much a fleeted by the prevailing gloom you may derive comfort from the reflection that where yon stand stood once the First Gentleman of Europe in the company of fellow-mouarchs. As I came away 1 found three little boys playing with a mounted cannon just outside the entrance. Two were affecting to load it; the other, astride on tiic top, was j alternately saying "Bang!” and declaring he was the U.S.A. So I had to think again of disarmament after all.