HORRORS OF NEXT WAR

Otago Witness, Issue 3594, 30 January 1923, Page 26

HORRORS OF NEXT WAR

HUDSON MAXIM’S PREDICTION. Those who went through the last war a close quarters to the scene of fightir. thought the bombing of London by Gemia planes and the shelling of Paris by 15 Bertha quite nasty enough. But Hudso Maxim, the inventor, declares that the dai gers to which the civilian populations < belligerent countries were exposed in th Great War will not be a circumstance t wliat will happen in the next war. Though the horrors predicted! by Maxim sound too horrible, he reminds the reade ihat 20 years before Germany tried to mas ter the world he had prophesied that poieoi gas. would be used in the next war despit any international agreement to the con ttary. Maxim also foretold the marvellou* uses to which the airplane would be pu w. ten it was still a fair-weather toy. H* predicted the use of torch and smoke bombs And tour years before Russia and Japai grappled, Maxim had written an article ii an American magaz’no forecasting such a conflict and stating that Japan would bi victorious an opinion which evoked derisioi at that time. Mr Maxim, who if, of course, famous ai an inventor of warlike and ether devices makes his latest prophesies and pleads foi universal disarmament as a remedy. SCATTERING DEADLY DISEASES. In the next war, says the inventor, we are going to see germs of the most deadly diseases sown broadcast by airplanes. We are uoing to see inland cities smothered in poisonous gases and! tens of thousands ol inhabitants, men, women, and children, killed in a few minutes. Fleas and cooties or body lice will aid typnus. fever and other deadly ailments sowed by billions over the inhabitants of enemy countries. Rats and mice will be infected with bubonic plague and let down from airplanes to spread contagion. There will bo no piace that one may hide himself and be safe from attack. All noncombatants will be exposed to destruction, as the sinful, according to Revelation of J udgment Day. DEADLY POISON GAS. As chairman of the committee on ordnance and explosives of the naval consulting board, says Mr Maxim, writing to the New York Tribune, “I had an opportunity during the war of examining more military and naval inventions than anyone ever before was called upon to examine in the same time. Among the inventions submitted was a poisonous gas, which the inventor claimed would be far more deadly than anything yet produced. I have lately seen in the press announcements that we have a poisonous gas, three drops of which, striking the body of a man, will result in certain death, and the vapour from one drop will surely be fatal Possibly this is the same gas that was submitted to me. We mean by ‘gas’ the vapour of the poisonous substance that produces the gas or vapour. ’ls it possible,” asks Maxim, “that we have reached a stage of intellectual development and mechanical accomplishment that is going to be suicidal? Is it possible that the human race is going to turn all its wonderful instrumentalities of this greet mechanical age to the destruction of humankind? Are the same instrumentalities which have lifted mankind out of barbarism to be employed to send him back to barbarism ? MAY SEE PROGRESS UNDONE. “I am 6S years old, and during my lifetime have seer, wrought three-quarters of all the accomplishments to which man today owes his elevated position. In' terms of human progress I was born more than halfway back to the cave man. Is it possible that I shall live to see the work of tho past century and a-half undone? I expect to live another 20 years, perhaps 30. Is it possible that I shall Jive to see Mars undo all that the inventor and his inventions have done in 150 years for human betterment?” The politician is the greatest war breeder in the world, says Maxim, and the real remedy for wars, according to him, is honest government.