Powers shrinks from wanton aggression, war and chicanery. But owing to the geographical position of Germany and our naval supremacy, England can achieve all its purposes by wars outside Europe, whereas English and Russian policy has shown that Germany cannot achieve its aims except by a European war. We have made small wars because small wars were what suited our purpose; Germany has made a great war because a great war was what suited Germany's purpose. We and they alike have been immoral in aim and brutal in method, each in the exact degree which was thought to be to the national advantage. If either they or we had had loftier aims or less brutal methods, the war might have been avoided.

Criticism of English as well as of German war motives and purposes was one of the factors which led to vigorous attempts by the government to subordinate all energy to the one purpose of carrying on the war. This policy found expression particularly in a series of acts of parliament, the Defence of the Realm Acts (commonly known as D. O. R. A.). The original law with its first amendment is here quoted.

1. His Majesty in Council has power during the continuance 487. Defence of the present war to issue regulations as to the powers and of the Realm Acts (Auduties of the Admiralty and Army Council, and of the members gust 8 and of His Majesty's forces, and other persons acting in His behalf, August 28, for securing the public safety and the defence of the realm; and 1914) may, by such regulations, authorize the trial by courts martial and punishment of persons contravening any of the provisions of such regulations designed (a) to prevent persons communicating with the enemy or obtaining information for that purpose or any purpose calculated to jeopardise the success of His Majesty's forces or to assist the enemy; or to prevent the spread of reports likely to cause disaffection or alarm; or (b) to secure the safety of any means of communication, or of railways, docks or harbors, or of any area which may be proclaimed by the Admiralty or Army Council to be an area which it is

of war

necessary to safeguard in the interest of the training or concentration of any of His Majesty's forces; in like manner as if such persons were subject to military law and had on active service committed an offence under section five of the Army Act; and may by such regulations also provide for the suspension of any restrictions on the acquisition or user of land, or the exercise of the power of making bye laws, or any other power under the Defence Acts, 1842 to 1875, or the Military Land Acts, 1891 to 1903.

2. This Act may be cited as the Defence of the Realm Act,

1914.

Significant changes in the technique of war are described by Will Irwin, a noted American war correspondent.

same

488. A graphic Through all the centuries of mechanical and scientific imdescription of provement, military armament the means of killing men changes in the technique had lagged behind. The primitive man killed in war by hitting his opponent with a hard substance a club or stone. Later he sharpened the stone so that it would more readily reach a vital spot, and had a knife or a sword. He mounted the knife on a stick to give himself greater reach, and had a spear. He discovered the projecting power of the bow, which would send a small spear beyond his own reach. Gunpowder arrived; that gave still further and more powerful projection. But the principle, the one method of killing a man in war, remained the -hit him with something hard. We had learned many ways of controlling and transmuting for the purposes of ordinary life the power stored up by the sun steam, electricity, the energy of falling water. Military science knew but one Crudeness of way the explosion of chemicals. If we look into a battleship, that "great, floating watch," we marvel at the intricacy of her machinery. But we should find that the engines, the turbines, the delicate and complicated electrical instruments, are all devices first invented for purely industrial activities and merely adapted for war. We should find the guns, the actual killing instrument, among the simplest machines on board. In centuries of mechanical invention and mechanical improvement

methods of fighting as compared

with industrial tech

nique

very little higher intelligence and no genius at all had been put into the mechanics of killing men.

There were good reasons. The men who discovered the great principles back of modern machinery and industrial method, such as Newton in physics, Friar Bacon and Faraday in chemistry, Ampère and Volta in electricity, were concerned only with pure science, with extending the field of human knowledge. The clever inventors and adapters such as Stephenson with his locomotive, Morse with his telegraph, Edison with his electric light and phonograph, Marconi with his wireless, Langley and the Wrights with their aeroplanes were concerned with improving the civilian processes of production and transportation or with adding material richness to modern life. Those who, in biology and kindred sciences, followed the paths blazed by the giants of the nineteenth century were even more directly benevolent in their ends. Ehrlich and Takamine worked to save, preserve, and lengthen human life. No first-class scientific mind was interested in research having for its end to destroy human life.

conducive to

Nor did the military caste, whose business - stripped of all its Military discigold lace and brass buttons — was to kill, add anything funda- pline not mental to the science of destruction. It is traditional that what originality few real improvements there have been in armament, such as the machine-gun and the submarine, were invented by civilians and by them sold to armies. Military life tends to destroy originality. It makes for daring action, makes against daring thought..

drafted into

[The one event which, more than any other, forced men of Why men of science and invention into the service of destructive warfare science were was the successful use of gas by the Germans on April 22, 1915, the service of during the second battle of Ypres.] After the second battle of war in 1915 Ypres lifted the lid, those men of science, those high technicians,... experimented with new methods of killing. Liquid flame burning men alive was introduced on the Western Front. This proved of only limited usefulness. The British introduced the tanks. These were important to the general change in warfare, as I shall show later, but they added nothing to the direct process of killing life, Gas seemed by all odds the most

Gas, and defence against it

promising of the new weapons. That simple chlorine which the Germans used in 1915 gave place to other gases more complex and more destructive to human body-cells. At first released only in clouds and dependent upon a favorable wind for their effect, the chemicals which generated these gases were later loaded into shells and projected miles beyond any danger to the army which employed them.

...

As gas improved, so did the defence against it. The crude mouth-pads, consisting of a strip of gauze soaked in "antichlorine" chemicals, which the women of England rushed to the front after Second Ypres, were succeeded by more secure and cumbersome masks. . . . However, this was an imperfect protection, because men could not or would not wear it all the time.... Yet the mask was a protection; let us therefore study to beat it. In the spring attack of 1918 the Germans introduced their "mustard gas." Unlike its forerunners, it was poisonous to the skin as well as to the lungs...

Now in all the experiments following Second Ypres, the chemists had in mind three qualities of the ideal killing gas. First, it should be invisible, thus introducing the element of surprise. The early, crude gases, even in small quantities, betrayed their presence by the tinge they gave the atmosphere. Second, it should be a little heavier than the atmosphere; it should tend to sink, so as to penetrate dugouts and cellars. Third, it should poison—not merely burn-all exposed areas of the body. American ingenuity solved the problem.... [The Lewisite gas] was invisible; it was a sinking gas, which would search out the refugees of dugouts and cellars; if breathed, it killed at once - and it killed not only through the lungs. Whereever it settled on the skin, it produced a poison which penetrated the system and brought almost certain death. It was inimical to all cell-life, animal or vegetable. Masks alone were of no use against it. Further, it had fifty-five times the "spread " of any poison gas hitherto used in the war. An expert has said that a dozen Lewisite air bombs of the greatest size in use during 1918 might with a favorable wind have eliminated the population of Berlin. Possibly he exaggerated, but probably not greatly. The Armistice came...

[There has been an enormous increase in the destructive power of those older weapons, the rifle and the cannon.] Yet nature always imposes limits on human ingenuity. We arrive at a point beyond which we cannot much further improve any given device. Military experts generally agree that we have about reached that impasse with guns and their explosive projectiles. The "Big Bertha" which bombarded Paris from a distance of seventy miles was only an apparent exception. . . . Even if we have not reached the limit of invention, other methods of destroying life and property hold out much more promise. Among these is the aëroplane. There we have not The aëroplane nearly reached the barrier set by nature upon ingenuity.

A modern weapon works by two distinct processes: the projection, which sends the death tool far into the region of the enemy, and the action usually some kind of explosion - by which it kills. The bombing aeroplane is essentially an instrument of projection. It extends "range" beyond any distance possible to a gun. The army aëroplanes of 1914 were in 1916 mentioned by the aviators as those "old-fashioned 'busses.'" In 1918 airmen employed similar scornful language concerning the machines of 1916. However, the range of the 1914 aëroplanes greatly excelled that of any gun; they could venture at least a hundred miles from their bases. By 1918 they were venturing two or three hundred miles; and the allied armies planned, in the spring of 1919, to make regular raids on Berlin, some four hundred miles away.

... As you increase the caliber and range of a gun you must increase the thickness of the steel casing which forms the shell, and correspondingly reduce the proportion of explosives or gas-forming chemical. But an air bomb - which is dropped, not fired- needs only a very thin casing. A big shell is in bulk mostly steel; an air bomb is mostly chemical. It was in shells like these that we would have packed our Lewisite gas had we decided to "eliminate all life in Berlin."

However, air bombardment was during the Great War essentially inaccurate. ... Then, just before the Armistice, an American, binding together many inventions made by civilians for civilian purposes, showed a dazzling way to the warfare of the future.