THE EOYAL AETILLEEY INSTITUTION. 
115 
compounded of all that seemed to us best. Elswick and Woolwich, Major 
Palliser and the French, have all contributed to it; even Sir Joseph Whitworth 
complained in his evidence before the Ordnance Council that “ of late the 
heavier guns have been made to approximate more nearly to my proportions ; 5 ' 
and this development has been effected at a cost of money and labour with 
which no foreign experiments can compare. From the small field guns 
which were introduced in 1858, we have advanced step by step to our 
12-ton, 18-ton, and 25-ton guns; we are now busy with the manufacture 
of a gun of 35-tons. Can any foreign critic point to any failure—to any 
breach of continuity—in this gradual development and advance? Is it 
not a fact that, on the contrary, the English wrought-iron guns have 
uniformly exhibited the qualities which have been claimed for them? It 
is worth while again to repeat, that out of about 6000 of such guns, not 
one has burst on service. What other system of artillery, we may confidently 
ask, can produce such credentials ? 
It is altogether beside the purpose to argue—as Captain von Doppelmair 
and others have done—that the 9-inch Woolwich gun is, in respect of 
penetrative effect, inferior to the 9J-inch Krupp gun. We have seen that, 
as a matter of fact, it is not inferior. But if it were, would that prove 
anything against the Woolwich system? Captain von Doppelmair does not 
need to be reminded that the penetrative power of a gun resolves itself 
ultimately into a measure of its endurance. It is happily not our practice 
iu England to subject our guns to exceptional charges, with a view 
to producing sensational effects. Mr. Krupp's 9j-inch gun was designed 
to fire 43 lb. charges; it was purely an afterthought, due to stress of 
circumstances, which prompted the adoption of a 531b. charge, and this 
before any trial had been made of the endurance of the gun with such 
charges. Why, we would ask again, was no increase of the English charge 
suggested or permitted ? And why, again, was a Krupp gun of 14J tons 
pitted against a gun of 12| tons ? And why has the former, since the Tegel 
experiments, been increased in weight to 16J tons? What took place was, 
in fact, a trial of a very big, heavy, costly gun, against a smaller, lighter, 
and far less expensive weapon. In this trial—as far as penetration was 
concerned—the smaller, lighter, and less costly weapon held its own; and 
Captain von Doppelmair thinks the occasion suitable for instituting an 
elaborate comparison unfavourable to the English gun ! 
But, more than this. There is a strange fatuity in these attempts to 
determine the value of two systems of ordnance mainly by measuring the 
penetrative power of any two guns of those systems. In England we have 
ever sought to produce a gun which, taken all round , would be for its size 
the most suitable for purposes of war. If mere penetration is to be the test 
of success, this can easily be secured. It is merely a question of increasing 
the power of a gun, without reference to its weight or cost, its handiness or 
safety. But the Woolwich gun which was tried at Tegel was submitted 
on other grounds than these. It was never supposed that the value of 
the two systems would be judged exclusively—or nearly so—by the results 
obtained against iron plates; for if this had been the declared intention, 
assuredly another description of English gun would have been submitted. 
There is, from an artillerist's point of view, something monstrous in this 
attempt to decide the issue mainly by penetrative results, and in the circum- 
