eee eee ee 
THE- DEBT TO SCIENCE. ° 
afterwards the prospect of our supply of toluol failing to equal the 
enormous demands of our shells necessitated a change of high explosive, 
and the one that was taken required special study before detonation could 
be insured. It was achieved through the unremitting labour of. those 
scientific workers who, little known to the public, have had to face 
and solve the innumerable problems that have presented themselves in 
the preparation and use of explosives during the war, and to whom 
personally I feel deeply grateful. Through their labours we arrived 
at a degree of excellence which reduced the proportion of the shells 
which failed to detonate from all causes to so small a figure that it 
was, I believe, little more than one-fifth of that of our “adversaries, 
Tt would take an artillerist to explain to you the changes in tactics 
brought about by the scientific work that has given us these reliable 
explosives. It has endowed us with heavy guns, having ranges of 
from 20 to 30 miles, and even more important howitzers which have 
been so effective at shorter ranges. For instance, we had howitzers 
which at ranges such as 8 to 15 miles could be relied on to fire shot 
after shot with a variation of a few yards. The history of our. 
advance in artillery is a fascinating tale of- difficulties met and over- 
come. 
The most striking example of the power placed in the hand of man 
by this complete control over propellents was provided early last year, 
when the whole world was thrown into amazement by the report that 
Paris was being bombarded by the Germans, who could not be firing 
from a’ point less than 70 miles from it. The world was at first 
incredulous. Then, as usual, it credited the Germans with having 
invented some new propellent of marvellous efficiency. But our 
artillerists knew better. They realized that, thanks to the control of 
pressures and rates of burning in our present smokeless powders, such 
a range could be obtained in a gun of determinable dimensions if it 
were worth our while to do it. Indeed, the whole details of the gun 
and the powder necessary to accomplish the feat were at once worked 
out, and the gun would have been manufactured if it had possessed 
sufficient military value to warrant the work and expense. But it 
did not. In its flight the projectile from Big Bertha must have 
reached a height four times as great as Mount Everest, the highest 
mountain in the world. It owed its longest range to the fact that 
during two-thirds of its flight it was passing through regions where 
the air was so rarefied that its resistance was negligible. And, 
finally, the distance passed over by the projectile was so great that if 
the Germans had taken the trouble to aim at any particular building they 
must have allowed nearly half-a-mile for the fact that during the flight 
the rotation of the earth would to that extent carry the target further 
towards the east than it would carry the gun. 
Savina Verpun. 
Take the internal combustion engine as an illustration that the 
special formative factors of the late war were not the result of purely 
military science, but of the advance in peaceful pursuits. Such an 
engine needed no supply from outside except petrol. To it we owed 
the aeroplane and tank, the*submarine, and the possibility of a road 
motor service which had shown itself capable of rivalling railway: 
C.14393.—4, 353 
