356 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. L. No. 1294 



icals, and apparatus of all kinds for van- 

 quishing the enemy and the saving of our 

 own men than had heen devised by the 

 enemy during many years of preparation 

 planned on the basis of a total disregard 

 of treaties and the conventions of war. 



Four years is too short a time for much 

 scientific invention to blossom to useful 

 maturity, even under the forced exigencies 

 of war and government control. It must 

 be remembered that in the past the great 

 majority of new discoveries and inven- 

 tions of merit have taken many years — 

 sometimes generations — to bring them into 

 general use. It must also be mentioned 

 that in some ijistances discoveries and in- 

 ventions are attributable to the general 

 advance in science and the arts which has 

 brought within the region of practical 

 politics an attack on some particular prob- 

 lem. So the work of the men of science 

 during the war has perforce been directed 

 more to the application of known prin- 

 ciples, trade knowledge and properties of 

 matter to the waging of war than to the 

 making of new and laiborious discoveries; 

 though, in effecting such applications, in- 

 ventions of a high order have been 

 achieved some of which promise to be of 

 great iisefulness in time of peace. 



The advance of science and the arts in 

 the last century had, however, wrought a 

 great change in the implements of war. 

 The steam-engine, the internal-combustion 

 engine, electricity, and the advances in 

 metallurgy and chemistry had led to the 

 building up of immense industries which, 

 when diverted from their normal uses, 

 have produced unprecedented quantities 

 of war material for the purposes of the 

 enormous armies, and also for the greatest 

 navy which the world has ever seen. 



The destructive energy in the field and 

 afloat has multiplied many hundredfold 

 since the time of the Napoleonic wars; 



both before and during the war the siz« 

 of guns and the efficiency of explosives 

 and shell increased immensely, and many 

 new implements of destruction were added. 

 Modern science and engineering enabled 

 armies unprecedented in size, efficiency 

 and equipment to be drawn from all parts 

 of the world and to be concentrated 

 rapidly in the fighting line. 



To build up the stupendous fighting 

 organization, ships have been taken from 

 their normal trade routes, locomotives and 

 material from the home railways, the 

 normal manufactures of the country have 

 been largely diverted to munitions of war ; 

 the home railways, tramways, roads, build- 

 ings and constructions, and material of all 

 kinds have been allowed to depreciate. 

 The amount of depreciation in roads and 

 railways alone has been estimated at £400,- 

 000,000 per annum at present prices. 

 Upon the community at home a very great 

 and abnormal strain has been thrown, not- 

 withstanding the increased oxitput per 

 head of the workers derived from modern 

 methods and improved machinery. In 

 short, we have seen for the first time in 

 history nearly the whole populations of 

 the principal contending nations enlisted 

 in intense personal and collective effort 

 in the contest, resulting in unisrecedented 

 loss of life and destruction of capital. 



A few figures will assist us to realize the 

 great difference between this war and all 

 preceding wars. At Waterloo, in 1815, 

 9,044 artillery rounds were fired, having a 

 total weight of 37.3 tons, while on one day 

 during the last offensive in Prance, on 

 the British front alone, 943,837 artillery 

 rounds were fired, weighing 18,080 tons — 

 more than 100 times the number of 

 rounds, and nearly 540 times the ■weight 

 of projectiles. Again, in the whole of 

 the South African War 273,000 artillery 

 roimds were fired, weigliing api^roximately 



