WARS OF THE FUTURE.

Pelorus Guardian and Miners' Advocate., Volume 30, Issue 29, 16 April 1918, Page 3

WARS OF THE FUTURE.

SOME WEAPONS WHICH MAY BE USED. The war of the future will be the war of the inventor, even more than it is to-day. Science, mechanics, and electricity have, as we all know, revolutionized modern warfare to a terrible degree. Talk to men who remember the Crimean War, and they will tell you that the European conflict is not war; it is wholesale murder, fearful, horrible, and inhuman. The wars of the future, however, if the scientist is to be believed, will be even more destructive.

At present ho is experimenting with heat rays. If, he contends, light rays can bo thrown upon a hostile position with the searchlights, why cannot heat rays be similarly reflected'; why not the hottest rays possible —namely, those of the bxyacetylene torch ? Before such a fiery glare, fortresses of steel and stone would melt, the giggest guns would crumble down into pools of steel, and whole regiments of men might, with one blast, be shrivelled into ashes.

Neither do scientists consider it outside the bounds of possibility in the future to devise means' of actonating explosives at a distance by wireless waves. The latter at present scatter in every direction, but the day may come when it will be practicable to restrict them to only one direction, so that they may be aimed; and it is not too far-fetched to predict that some future general touching a button, will send speeding to their target, which will be, perhaps, an entire army division, wireless impulses so powerful that they will electrocute every man within their range. In regard to big guns, experts say that the limit is by no means reached with the manufacture of 17in. firing monsters. They prophesy 60in. and even 80in. guns, which will be able to shoot 60 or 80 miles, the range being given by aviators signalling by wireless.

Again, plans are already under way for the construction of monster submarines, with a cruising radius from London to New York. They will thus gain some of the independence of land possessed by Dreadnoughts, for even they must visit coaling stations or be attended by colliers. The next halfcentury, indeed, may see battleships swept from the seas, and some nation holding the mastery of the ocean by virtue of a fleet of submarines.