The value and importance of saltpetre as a source of power is seen in the adaptation of its explosive force to special purposes. It performs that work well which we cannot carry on so perfectly by means of any other agent, and the great mining and engineering works of a country are dependent on this source for their success, and for overcoming obstacles where other forces fail. With positive certainty the engineer can remove a portion of a cliff or rock without breaking it into many parts, and can displace masses to convenient distances, under all the varying demands which arise in the process of mining, tunnelling, or cutting into the earth.
In all these cases of application we see that the powder contains within itself both the material for producing force and the means by which that force is applied, no other motor being necessary in its application.
Modern warfare has become in its simplest expression the intelligent application of force, and that side will successfully overcome or resist the other which can in the shortest time so direct the greater force. In artillery as well as infantry practice, the control over the time necessary in the decomposition of the powder has been obtained through the refinements already made in the manufacture, and the best results of the latest trials confirm in full the conclusion that saltpetre is a source of great and easily controlled power, which can act through short or extended space.
Under the view here presented, it is evident that saltpetre is indispensable to progress in the arts of civilization and peace, as well as in military operations, and that no nation can advance in material interests, or even maintain strict independence, without possessing within its boundaries either saltpetre or the sources from which it can be drawn at all times. In its use for protecting the property of a nation from the attacks of an enemy, and as the means of insuring respect, we may consider saltpetre as an element of strength in a State, and as such deserving a high place in the consideration of those who direct the counsels or form the policy of a country.
Has the subject of having an exhaustless supply of this important product or the means of producing it been duly considered?
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WEATHER IN WAR.
It is not very flattering to that glory-loving, battle-seeking creature, Man, that his best-arranged schemes for the destruction of his fellows should often be made to fail by the condition of the weather. More or less have the greatest of generals been "servile to all the skyey influences." Upon the state of the atmosphere frequently depends the ability of men to fight, and military hopes rise and fall with the rising and falling of the metal in the thermometer's tube. Mercury governs Mars. A hero is stripped of his plumes by a tempest, and his laurels fly away on the invisible wings of the wind, and are seen no more forever. Empires fall because of a heavy fall of snow. Storms of rain have more than once caused monarchs to cease to reign. A hard frost, a sudden thaw, a "hot spell," a "cold snap," a contrary wind, a long drought, a storm of sand,—all these things have had their part in deciding the destinies of dynasties, the fortunes of races, and the fate of nations. Leave the weather out of history, and it is as if night were left out of the day, and winter out of the year. Americans have fretted a little because their "Grand Army" could not advance through mud that came up to the horses' shoulders, and in which even the seven-league boots would have stuck, though they had been worn as deftly as Ariel could have worn them. They talked as if no such thing had ever before been known to stay the march of armies; whereas all military operations have, to a greater or a lesser extent, depended for their issue upon the softening or the hardening of the earth, or upon the clearing or the clouding of the sky. The elements have fought against this or that conqueror, or would-be conqueror, as the stars in their courses fought against Sisera; and the Kishon is not the only river that has through its rise put an end to the hopes of a tyrant. The condition of rivers, which must be owing to the condition of the weather, has often colored events for ages, perhaps forever. The melting of the snows of the Pyrenees, causing a great rise of the rivers of Northern Spain, came nigh bringing ruin upon Julius Caesar himself; and nothing but the feeble character of the opposing general saved him from destruction.
The preservation of Greece, with all its incalculable consequences, must be credited to the weather. The first attempt to conquer that country, made by the Persians, failed because of a storm that disabled their fleet. Mardonius crossed the Hellespont twelve or thirteen years before that feat was accomplished by Xerxes, and he purposed marching as far as Athens. His army was not unsuccessful, but off Mount Athos the Persian fleet was overtaken by a storm, which destroyed three hundred ships and twenty thousand men. This compelled him to retreat, and the Greeks gained time to prepare for the coming of their enemy. But for that storm, Athens would have been taken and destroyed, the Persians having an especial grudge against the Athenians because of their part in the taking and burning of Sardis; and Athens was destined to become Greece for all after-time, so that her as yet dim light could not have been quenched without darkening the whole world. When Xerxes himself entered Europe, and was apparently about to convert Hellas into a satrapy, it was a storm, or a brace of storms, that saved that country from so sad a fate, and preserved it for the welfare of all after generations of men. The Great King, in the hope of escaping "the unseen atmospheric enemies which howl around that formidable promontory," had caused Mount Athos to be cut through, but, as the historian observes, "the work of destruction to his fleet was only transferred to the opposite side of the intervening Thracian sea." That fleet was anchored on the Magnesian coast, when a hurricane came upon it, known to the people of the country as the Hellespontias, and which blew right upon the shore. For three days this wind continued to blow, and the Persians lost four hundred warships, many transports and provision craft, myriads of men, and an enormous amount of matériel. The Grecian fleet, which had fled before that of Persia, now retraced its course, believing that the latter was destroyed, and would have fled again but for the arts and influence of Themistocles. The sea-fights of Artemisium followed, in which the advantage was, though not decisively, with the Greeks; and that they finally retreated was owing to the success of the Persians at Thermopylae. Between the first and second battle of Artemisium the Persians suffered from another storm, which inflicted great losses upon them. These disasters to the enemy greatly encouraged the Greeks, who believed that they came directly from the gods; and they made it possible for them to fight the naval battle of Salamis, and to win it. So great was the alarm of Xerxes, who thought that the victors would sail to the Hellespont, and destroy the bridge he had thrown over that strait, that he ordered his still powerful fleet to hasten to its protection. He himself fled by land, but on his arrival at the Hellespont he found that the bridge had been destroyed by a storm; and he must have been impressed as deeply as Napoleon was in this century, that the elements had leagued themselves with his mortal enemies. After his flight, and the withdrawal of his fleet from the war, the Persians had not a chance left, and the defeat of his lieutenant Mardonius, at Plataea, was of the nature of a foregone conclusion.
It is not possible to exaggerate the importance of the assistance which the Greeks received from the storms mentioned, and it is not strange that they were lavish in their thanks and offerings to Poseidon the Saviour, or that they continued piously to express their gratitude in later days. Mankind at large have reason to be thankful for the occurrence of those storms; for if they had not happened, Greece must have been conquered, and all that she has been to the world would have been that world's loss. It was not until after the overthrow of the Persians that Athens became the home of science, literature, art, and commerce; and if Athens had been removed from Greece, there would have been little of Hellenic genius left for the delight of future days. Not only was most of that which is known as Greek literature the production of the years that followed the failure of Xerxes, but the success of the Greeks was the means of preserving all of their earlier literature. The Persians were not barbarians, and, had they achieved their purpose, they might have promoted civilisation in Europe; but that civilization would have been Asiatic in its character, and it might have been as fleeting as the labors of the Carthaginians in Europe and Africa. Nor would they have felt any interest in the preservation of the works of those Greeks who wrote before the Marathonian time, which they would have regarded with that contempt with which most conquerors look upon the labors of those whom they have enslaved. That most brilliant of ages, the age of Pericles, could never have come to pass under the dominion of Persia; and the Greeks of Europe, when ruled by satraps from Susa, would have been of as little weight in the ancient world as, under that kind of rule, were the Greeks of Ionia. All future history was involved in the decision of the Persian contest, and we may well feel grateful that the event was not left for the hands of men to decide, but that the winds and the waves of the Grecian seas so far equalized the power of the combatants as to enable the Greeks, who fought for us as well as for themselves, to roll back the tide of Oriental conquest. We might not have had even the Secession War, if there had been no storms in the Thracian seas in a summer the roses of which perished more than two thousand three hundred years ago.[A]