Decembeb 11, 1908] 



SCIENGM 



821 



learn. In order to forecast the future, it 

 is necessary to recast the past. 



We are to-day marching in the van of 

 achievement with a vast wealth of accom- 

 plishment behind us. Still, relatively 

 speaking, we are merely entering at the 

 very threshold of invention. 



When primitive man first learned that 

 with a club as a weapon he could vastly 

 reinforce his teeth and fists and claws, he 

 doubtless thought that there remained but 

 little chance for further improvement in 

 weapons of warfare. 



The human hand has been forged from 

 the fin of a fish by the human brain. The 

 hand, in its turn, has built upon the micro- 

 scopic terminal ganglion of the primitive 

 cordworm the giant brain of a Herbert 

 Spencer, infinitesimal piece by piece. 

 Hand and brain have always worked to- 

 gether in a close partnership. 



When we compare the course of human 

 invention with the evolutionary processes 

 of nature, we are struck by the parallelism. 

 Everywhere in nature there is a fierce 

 rivalry that stimulates to improved varia- 

 tion to meet the exigencies of necessity. 

 The complex is evolved from the simple 

 and the large has small beginnings. The 

 intelligently selective grows out of blind 

 inertia tending always toward the survival 

 of the fittest. Had we infinite powers of 

 understanding of natural processes, we 

 should then have infinite foresight too and 

 should be able to forecast with unerring 

 accuracy what the future has in store. A 

 sufScient knowledge and observation of na- 

 ture would have foretold each before its 

 invention, by some parallelism or counter- 

 part in nature, many of the greatest inven- 

 tions of man. 



The screw propeller would have been 

 foreseen in the tail of the fish. The 

 armored saurian of the reptilian age would 

 have given a foreview of the armored 



knight of the middle ages, destined to hold 

 the mastery awhile, and doomed in turn, 

 just as the old hard-hided antediluvian 

 monsters went down before the agile sharp- 

 toothed carnivora, to fall beneath the 

 supremacy of the light-footed unhehneted 

 soldier, without shield or cuirass, but 

 whose powers of offense with fiLrearms be- 

 come his best means of defense too. 



The old flint-lock blunderbuss charged 

 with lead and black gun-powder was 

 thought pretty near perfection as a weapon 

 of war. Still, the coat of mail was laid 

 aside slowly and reluctantly; also slowly 

 and reluctantly with the further improve- 

 ment in firearms did armies break from 

 solid rank formation and disperse over 

 large areas and fight in skirmishing order. 



To-day it has become a recognized truism 

 of military science that victory depends 

 upon the concentration of attack upon the 

 most vital points of an enemy's position, 

 while offering to the enemy the minimum 

 of vital exposure. To this end, wisdom 

 has led to the division and dispersion of 

 the men and enginery constituting the 

 units of attack, while still enabling each 

 attacking unit to concentrate upon any 

 desired point of the enemy's position. 



The greatest means of defense are effi- 

 cient means of offense. The greatest pro- 

 tection against receiving heavy blows is to 

 be able to strike heavy blows. A heavy 

 blow upon an enemy is far better than 

 heavy armor on one's self. 



Naval warfare too must soon conform to 

 the wisdom of this lesson, and the battle- 

 ship, the gigantic armored saurian of the 

 sea, is destined to be dominated in the near 

 future by some agile, swift, sharp-toothed 

 carnivora of destruction. 



In ancient times, when men fought with 

 clubs and swords and spears, victory de- 

 pended upon the actual amount of brute 

 force that could be opposed to brute force, 



