Day of the Submarine.

Timaru Herald, Volume LXXXI, Issue 12480, 17 September 1904, Page 3 (Supplement)

Day of the Submarine.

(By " Tohunga " in Auckland " Herald.") Whatever else has been shown by the events of the Russo-Japanese war, it cannot be said that the dav of the submarine

has come. We have had very full and very gratifying exhibitions of the various ways in which modern men can kill one another, and have only had cause to grurn ble because occasionally the curtain wo; a trifle slow in going up for a new act. But, taking them all round, both Russian* -arid Japanese have done much to enable u; to pass the time without over-wearying, and have even given us some little to think about. But they have not yefe enabled us to say that ttho submarine was an actual factor the mechanical devices of civilised' men. Not that either Russians or Japanese can be considered civilised in the Western sense, but we may be sure that if a submarine existed that was of any real value one or both of them would have managed to secure it; for they have the cash, and nowadays the king of the cannibal islands couM buy anything in the world if he were willing and able to pay for it. He always could. While en passant it may be as well lo inquire what we mean by " being civilised in the Western sense." We certainly don't mean the mere profession of Christianity, for then Russia would come cheerfully inside the Western circle, and we as "evidently don't mean the wearing of collars, for then tlie Mikado could make his eveiy subject Western in twenty-four hours by threatening something slow and painful with boiling oil in it. Eastern civilisation may be better or worse thar Western —to hear some folk talk one would imagine it so infinitely superior as to inherently possess the mission of wiping out the whole of Western civilisation—but it is,'in any case, altogether different. At its best., Western civilisation represents the progress made by the white race; at its best Eastern civilisation represents the progress made by the yellow race. In the West a society has been wrought out which at its best holds that all its members are equal and that the conscience of the humblest is a higher law than the decree of prince or prelate. In the East a society has been evolved which at its best obeys implicitly the decree of its autocrat "and submits its every thought and every belief to the teaching of those held to be superior. Possibly the apotheosis of individuality which is the ear-mark of true Western civilisation is a mistake, but we are what it has made us, and our great mechanical development has resulted therefrom. Only where men's minds were comparatively free, where their imaginations were not limited and restrained by blind submission to custom or decree, could our mechanical progress have been effected. On the other hand, only where a nation does unhesitatingly what it is told, as the Peruvians under the Incas, the Japanese under the Mikadoes, could an entire people suddenly acquire control of mechanical arts previously strange to it. The two capacities and qualifications are as widely different as are the colours of Western and Eastern skins, and the effects of them upon the progress of humanity may be equally advantageous but must be fundamentally different. It is" rather interesting, come to think of it, that our wonderful Western civilisation. with all the fruits of all its suffering and struggle, may be intended solely to win material progress for the wonderful . East, Our lifelong schooling in the frozen North, our centuries of desperate strife with stormy seas and barren lands, where onlv the self-reliant, the daring and the patient could live aud pass life on; our destruction of the various that vainly endeavoured 1 to place the Eastern yoke of obedience to the superior upon "the neck of our unruly masses; and the culmination of our individualities jnd our liberties in the casting down of the barriers ! that once limited the movements and the discoveries of men may have been but an arrangement for the education of the East. 'We made the earth small and insignificant; we discovered vast natural forces and chained them; we brought metal-working to perfection, navigation to a science and militarism to a fine art. Then we handed' over to the East the progress in "winning which we had utterly exhausted our racial energies and dud out. Is that to be our racial epitaph? But whether it be so or not, there is no sign vet of the triumphant submarine. You may recall the sneer of Mr Punch at the French submarines, the lesson of which is still wife us. " Ah, my brave sailors." says the Frenchman. They-aie I bravest uieu in the world. They always bid a last farewell to their wives "and families every time they go below." Now, though we may laugh at the Frenchman who is not ashamed to show that ho ap-

predates a danger which the no braver .Englishman pretends to iguore, we cannot laugh at the reality of the peril. In spite of all that is said we have no reason to suppose that there yet exists a submarine which is not far more dangerous to her own crew than to anybody else. Until this is altered the submarine is not very likely to take a prominent place in modern warfaic.

It is true that most of us have taken a most enjoyable and 1 exciting trip under the deep blue sea. We did it in tlio famous Nautilus, built by Monsieur Jules Verne to the order of Captain Nemo. But it was the first and the last of vessels to have complete mastery of the underseas, and since it was destroyed at the •Mysterious Island it lias been found impossible' to. replace, it- In the Nautilus jre dived as easily .as a. fish and surveyed the ocean depths while at a comfortable meal' through the great plate-glass windows of luxurious dining-rooms. It was only when trapped under the Antarctic ice for many days that we felt any difficulty in breathing, and our speed was somewhat faster, at need, than an express. But the poor modern submarine! What a change! They do not now build the submarine or make the cakes that they i did when we were bovs. I

The modern submarine is apparently a body-cramping and blood-curdling affair, in which your head begins to ache long before the dive and your heart begins to fail long before it looks well to come back to the surface. The presence of a submarine can apparently be detected from a vessel afloat as easily as the coming of a train can from a railway platform, and the poor submarinists have as yet some difficulty in moving as fast as "an ordinary sailing-boat. They are more or less in the dark, for they can only see a few yards ahead, while from a balloon they themselves can be seen as easily as goldfish in a glass bowl. Of course, they will improve, for everything improves. But the successful imitation of Jules Verne's Nautilus has yet to be put under sea. On the other hand, the great step lias been taken of constructing a vessel in which men can move about under water, cut completely off from the outer air. This is the necessary starting-point of all submarine architecture, and may lead to the construction of a ship beside which the immortal Nautilus will be altogether insignificant. But it is worth noticing that some of the greatest experts in submarine navigation have come to the conclusion that only in big vessels can the proper conditions be obtained. Our old friend, Jules Verne, saw this thirty years ago. His Nautilus was a big affair, with a big crew and an enormous displacement, with water-tight compartments and all sorts of contrivances for securing the comfort and safety of its company. Practical men attempted to creep before they walked, by means of little affairs, but it is very probable that the first satisfactory underwater boat will be much as Jules Verne imagined it. But. after all, the day of the submarine will not be nearly so important to us as the day of the flying machine. A vessel that- could speed unseen under the waters, unmolested by the waves, would be a terrible thing in war, and a great convenience in peace, but a flying machine, which would dispense with roads, and sail serenely over either sea or land, would be even more useful to the Norf.li of Auckland and very much more dangerous to Port Arthur.