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stance that such a trial should be deliberately conducted with guns of 
admittedly different penetrative power. 
A still more serious objection to Captain von Doppelmair* s criticism, must 
be taken on the ground that he has mixed up a variety of things which have 
no necessary connection with the subject. He treats the question as if— 
nay, he expressly declares that—breech-loading is impossible with English 
guns, 1 because of the inferiority of our material; he assumes, moreover, that 
we are tied down to one particular description of powder; and he throughout 
conveys the impression that our calibre, length, and weight of guns are so 
inseparably mixed up together as to become, in fact, fixed beyond power of 
alteration. This is not, we make bold to say, fair or reasonable criticism; 
just as it is neither fair nor reasonable to claim for steel projectiles fired 
from Krupp guns a special advantage, as if such projectiles could not be 
fired from wrought-iron guns. 
If breech-loading be better than muzzle-loading, there is nothing to prevent 
the English artillery and navy from adopting it; 2 if prismatic powder be 
superior to E.L.G., the former powder could be used here as well as in 
Prussia; if a long gun be preferable to a short one, there is no reason why the 
English guns should not be made longer—and heavier, if that be an advan¬ 
tage—or 9J ins. in calibre instead of 9 ins.; there is no inherent incapacity in 
English ordnance to fire the same sized projectiles and the same weight of 
charge as the Prussian guns, notwithstanding Captain von Doppelmair's 
statements to the contrary. 3 These are details which are open to all the 
world, of which neither Prussia nor Krupp possesses the patent, and which, 
if it seemed to us desirable to change them, could be changed to-morrow. 
Between these details there is no absolute or permanent connection; and 
arguments directed, like Captain von Doppelmair* s, against these things 
en masse, without any such distinction as an artillerist ought to know how 
to make, must when handled fall to pieces. An English artilleryman, 
indeed, will smile at the statement that our system is so compact as to 
permit of no changes in detail without injury to the whole, when he thinks 
of the almost too numerous changes to which these details are continually 
being subjected. As an answer to Captain von Doppelmair* s argument on 
this point, it will be sufficient to mention that at the present moment w r e are 
introducing a powder which has been proved to possess superior advantages 
to the prismatic powder, without its inconveniences; that the weights of our 
guns, and the relation of weight to calibre, undergo occasional modification ; 4 
that the amount of charge for each gun is not fixed by any unalterable law, 
but is susceptible of variation as circumstances may dictate—as is proved by 
the revision of the whole of the charges for our heavier rifled guns, conse¬ 
quent upon the introduction of pebble powder; that the material of the 
projectile is obviously quite independent of the nature of guns, and has been 
1 Doppelmair, p. 24. An effective and complete refutation of this statement is afforded by the 
circumstance that some experiments at Vienna are now (November, 1870) about to be carried on 
with an English gun, which is in every respect an exact imitation of Krupp’s 95 -inch breech-loader, 
except that it is made of coiled wrought-iron instead of Krupp’s steel. 
2 See note next above. 
3 Doppelmair, pp. 24, 25. 
4 Witness the recent adoption of the 11-inch instead of the 12-inch calibre for the 25-ton gun, 
