THE ROYAL ARTILLERY INSTITUTION. 
119 
not even reason on the foreign experiments to which appeal is made, but 
must blindly accept them, and whatever conclusions the partisans of Essen 
may be pleased to derive from them. Do we prefer muzzle-loaders ? We 
are wrong. Do we prefer chilled iron projectiles to steel? We are wrong. 
Do we prefer 12J-ton guns for general purposes to guns of 14| tons? We 
are wrong. Briefly, do we prefer Woolwich guns to Krupp's? We are 
wrong—from beginning to end, in large things as in small. The foreign 
critics know our wants better than we know them ourselves. A few hundred 
rounds fired at Tegel have exposed our errors. The hundreds of thousands 
of rounds fired in England are of no value. 
As regards this system which is being pressed upon our unconditional 
acceptance, we have already considered some of its more salient points, and 
have shown that—as far as penetrative effect, rapidity, accuracy, and facility 
of manipulation are concerned—we are able to produce with our English 
system equal or greater results at about one-third the cost. 1 2 The question 
of absolute endurance we have also discussed at some length, and shown 
that, while the Tegel trials afford no evidence whatever of the relative 
endurance of the two systems, which were tried with dissimilar weapons 
under totally dissimilar conditions, there have gradually through many years 
been accumulating proofs of the endurance of the English guns which are 
incontestable, and beside which the instances which are adduced of the 
endurance of Krupp's guns 3 are rare indeed. 
There is another side of the question, to which we have before referred, 
but about which something more must be said. Captain von Doppelmair 
asserts that “from the trial of one specimen (of steel guns) a judgment can 
be formed as to all guns of the same description/'’ 3 To this axiom we 
desire to take unqualified and emphatic exception. No more unsafe rule 
could be adopted for the introduction of any system of artillery than this; 
for steel guns it is an especially false and dangerous principle, because an 
essential feature and radical fault of steel is its uncertainty. Here, indeed, 
we touch at last the heart of the question which Captain von Doppelmair 
has raised. That question, as regards gun structure, when divested of 
the complexity with which Captain von Doppelmair has succeeded in 
surrounding it, is simply one as to the fitness of certain materials to resist 
dynamic strains. It is a common fact that steel is remarkable for its lack 
of uniformity in its power of resistance to dynamic strains. Its most 
inveterate advocates are obliged to make their steel approximate to wrought- 
iron as nearly as the nature of the former will admit, before they dare employ 
1 It is unnecessary seriously to discuss the pretensions put forward by Captain von Doppelmair and 
Mr. Krupp on behalf of the 8-inch Krupp gun—as being superior in penetrative power to the 9-inch 
English gun. If what we have said be correct, as to the 95 -inch Krupp gun being at most only just 
equal in its penetrative effects to the English 9-inch gun, if not actually slightly inferior to it, it is 
surely asking of us too much to believe that the 8-inch Krupp gun is more powerful than the 9-inch 
Woolwich. This is proving too much, for it amounts in effect to a statement that the 8*inch Krupp 
gun is superior also to the 95-inch Krupp—a conclusion from which we are sure Mr. Krupp would 
dissent, although it is one in which his own arguments, if accepted literally, land him* 
2 Captain von Doppelmair only adduces seven such instances ; of these, four must be rejected as 
being solid guns (see ante, pp» 103, 104). 
3 Doppelmair, p. G9; 
