GERMAN DESIGNS ON SUEZ.

Pelorus Guardian and Miners' Advocate., Volume 30, Issue 20, 12 March 1918, Page 3

GERMAN DESIGNS ON SUEZ.

TKANS-EUROPEAN CAx.—. SCHEMES.

LONDON, March 10. Lord Denbigh,. interviewed by the “Globe,” said the Germans’ real purpose in this war is to secure a strong strategic position in North Palestine, whence they will threaten the Suez Canal, which is the main ganglion of > the British Empire. A ship canal is now under construction connecting the Khine and the Danube,* and another is projected connecting the Elbe and the Danube. These will enable the Germans to bring destroyers and submarines secretly across Europe and choose their moment to rush out and make the approaches to the Suez Canal impossible. We would then only be able to reach India via Suez Canal by the Germans’ gracious permission. We stopped Germany from burgling Madiera in 1905 by moving our fleet, Germany desiring to turn it into another Heligoland, but she is still anxious to seize Madiera and the Azores in order to dominate the Atlantic.

Here are a few astonishing facts in , the “Popular Science Monthly” about the Sperry searchlight, the invention of Elmo A. Sperry, Brooklyn, who is already known as the inventor of the airplane stabiliser and ship gyroscope bearing his name, and the first electric arc light. It is ten feet high, its mirror has a diameter of five feet, and it weighs three tons. Its beam is as brilliant as the sun at 8 o’clock in the morning or 4 in the afternoon, Now York latitude, and one can read a newspaper by its light 30 miles away. The heat of its focussed beam is so intense that it will set paper afire at a distance cf 250 feet. It has a candle power of more than one and a quarter billion. One of the most powerful beacons along the American coast is the Sandy Hook lighthouse. But the Sperry searchlight is 22 times more brilliant than that light. Wore the Sperry lamp substituted for the lighthouse beacon, a ship passing out to sea could be bathed in light until it disappeared below the horizon. By swinging the Ight back and forth across the sky it has been visible 160 miles away. For navy use the Sperry lamp illuminates a target ten times more brilliantly than any other projector devised.