ANCIENT AND MODERN WEAPONS
Every fresh modern war has been fought with new weapons, and during the past century there have been countless inventions for the carrying on of warfare in a more destructive manner, apparently on the philanthropic theory that war should be made so terrible that it must quickly pass away.
But it has happened that as soon as a particularly horrible contrivance was invented and introduced into armies and navies, other inventors immediately set themselves to offset and discount its probable effect. Consequently war not only has not passed away, but we have it with us in more frightful form that ever before. Thus it is that each big war, after being heralded as the world’s last conflagration, has proved but the herald of another war, bigger and more death-dealing still.
Since the Civil War in the United States, in which probably more new features in modes of fighting were introduced than in any conflict that had preceded it, there have been immense improvements in arms, in armament and in general efficiency of both armies and navies. It was the Civil War that brought into being the turreted MONITOR, one of the greatest contributions to naval architecture the navies of the world had then known. While the turrets on the modern battleship are very different in design, in armor and in arrangement from those on the old monitors, they are nothing more than an adaptation of the original devices.
The same is the case with the small arms and the field guns of the modern armies, these having been greatly improved since the period of the Civil war. The breech-loading and even the magazine rifle are now in use in every army, while the smallest field piece of today is almost as efficient as the most powerful gun in use fifty years ago.
The first attempt to use a torpedo boat dates back to the Civil War. A primitive contrivance it was, but it showed a possibility in naval warfare which speedily led to the general building of torpedo boats, and to the invention of the highly efficient Whitehead torpedo.