APPLETONS' 



POPULAR SCIENCE 



MONTHLY. 



JUNE, 1897. 



EVOLUTION OF THE MODERN HEAVY GUN. 



Bv W. LE CONTE STEVENS, 



PROFESSOR OF PHYSICS IN RENSSELAER POLYTECHNIC INSTITUTE. 



DURING the last half of the nineteenth century, a period of 

 extraordinary fertility in the industrial application of all 

 departments of physical science, it would be remarkable if great 

 progress were not made in the development of the materials of 

 warfare, both offensive and defensive. It is true there have been 

 few great wars during the half century just closing, fewer than 

 during the corresponding previous period, when Napoleon made 

 all Europe his chronic battle ground. But with progress in the 

 arts of peace there comes progress in machinery of all kinds. 

 Guns are machines which happily we are not often called upon 

 to use in deadly earnest. The degree of perfection with which 

 a machine does deadly work serves as a powerful argument to 

 induce caution before bringing it into use. If the civilized world 

 ever attains the millennium of freedom from warfare, it will not 

 be because the philosophy of good will to men has triumphed, 

 but because war is too terrible and costly for any nation to risk 

 the sure and swift destruction it brings upon the vanquished. 

 Patriotism will not be extinguished, but it will be tempered 

 with the spirit of rational compromise. During the thirteen 

 years of Napoleon's leadership his wars cost France one billion 

 dollars. During the four years of civil war in America the cost 

 to the Government of the United States was about four billion 

 dollars, apart from treasures expended in vain by the Confederate 

 States. The American civil war was thus at least a dozen times 

 more expensive per year than war was during the time of 

 Napoleon. 



VOL. LI. 11 



