A Terrible Instrument of War.

Manawatu Herald, 28 April 1892, Page 3

A Terrible Instrument of War.

The new German artillery which will shortly be introduced is said to be the most terrible instrument of war yet made. During the Francofrnssian war it was considered splendid shooting if by the firing of a shell splinters were thrown within a circuit of 40 cr 60 paces and it was seldom that more than seven or eight men were wounded by one shell, bat the new weapon, for which the Eeichatag was asked to vote money, two hundred million marks in January or February, has enormously greater destructive capabilities. The experiments made with it last summer, in the presence of the Emperor, at the Tntevbogk ranges, deeply impressed the expert spectators. The gun was trained upon a large target place about 50 paces from the edge of a wood. The first shot missed the target, but ploughed a way through Ihe wocd for a distance of about 1600 feet Immediately afterwards the wood was seen to be on fire, and

soon a large area was in a blaze. The'conflagration was directly due to the bursting of the shell, charged with a power which is the secret of German Government, and which is designed to set fire 'to anything that was in a wide circuit. In addition to this burning quality the splinters of a shell burst by the new powder entirely cover a circle of 900 feet. Some of these splinters are large enough to kill a man, while many are so small as to be almost invisible and do not wound, but merely excoriate the skin. By the Emperor's orders an enormous target was constructed, and the effects of a shell which burst upon it were carefully noted. My informant declares that there were tens of thousands of holes in that target after the shot had been fired. The new guns supplied to the Imperial navy will be furnished with this bursting powder as, its terrible effectiveness has been fully demonstrated at sea also. At Kiel, for instance, an old ironclad used as a target, was sunk after four shots had been fired at her. My informant, who is an officer high in rank on the active list, assents that a battery of the new artillery, once it got the range, would soon annihilate an entire division, and he declares that the possession of the new powder and gun the directors of the German army have a desire for peace, because they shudder at the idea of going to war with such ruthless weapons.