22nd Nov.
THE cable has told us that Oom Paul's citizen soldiers have no love for Lyddite. We do not wonder at it. Had there been correspondents with the Khalifa, a similar protest would Fim, Modern man has had to be rebably have been received from
educated up to his present toleration of demoniac means of taking life. It is not so very long ago, no longer than the American Civil War, that the human conscience objected to "infernal machines," and torpedoes were tabooed. Man was not yet satisfied that the use of such weapons could be considered fair play. That "all is fair in love and war" may be proverbial, but soldiers have never acted upon the maxim when treachery and. mean advantage was opposed to the spirit of the time. There has always been a code of honour on these points more rigid in some countries than in others, but more or less universal, and offences against it have ever been denounced and, when possible, avenged. But in these days it would seem that no limit was possible to the adoption of the ever-increasing destructiveness of modern war material. The Peace Conference, however, did something. Objection was taken to the dropping of dynamite from balloons, and various recommendations were made in other directions.
The earliest common explosive of high power was dynamite, This under the name of nitro-glycerine was discovered in 1847, but it was nearly 20 years after before Nobel employed it for blasting purposes, and the first war which saw its use to any appreciable extent was that of 1870-1, when the Germans used it largely in torpedoes for the protection of their harbours from the dreaded French fleet. Since then. the Americans have experimented considerably with dynamite guns, but with no very satisfactory results, since up to the present time it would appear that pneumatic propelling power is a sine non, and pneumatic power has hitherto been found lacking in drivin force. Hence the range is small an the trajectory high. All explosives may roughly be classed in two categories; those which are merely mechanical niixtures, og. gunpowder, and those which are chemically combined, as for instance gun-cotton, cordite, etc. Their powers vary according tothe rapidity, with which they can change from a solid or liquid to a gaseous state, and the amount of which a given quantity can pro-For ages gunpowder held undisputed sway. Its constituents, sulphur, saltpetre, and charcoal, are common everywhere, and no great skill was necessary in the mixing. Hence it is that gunpowder from one end of the world to the other varies only in the proportions in which it is mixed and a few other minor details. But of recent years miners, gunners, and military' men of all sorts have been clamouring for greater strength in less bulk, and! the result has been nitro compounds of many sorts, gun-cotton, cordite, Schultze's powder, picric powder, Lyddite, melinite, ete., etc. The last-named was for a while a French secret product. Pirie acid in the form of an ammonia salt is one of its constituents. At first eat results were prophesied as to its destructive power and the advantage its use would be against foes not similarly provided. The Minister of War had very exhaustive experiments tried to test its powers. On one occasion 1,500 kilos. of powder were pitted against 1,250 ilas. of melinite. The reports say "the explosion of the latter was more violent than the preceding one, and the noise was distinctly heard at Avignon, seven kilometres distant, while the vibration was felt. 500° metres away. The destruction was terrible. The mass displaced was perhaps, not much more than in the case of the gunpowder, but the rocks looked as if they had been ground in a mill." Notwithstanding its early promise, however, melinite has not been quite the success that was expected. It is neither so stable nor so reliable as could be wished, and some bad accidents have resulted in consequence.
Lyddite, its British representative, also contains as an ingredient the same picric acid. Both Lyddite and melinite have this advantage over dynamite that they do not need a specially constructed gun, a gun which if compressed air must be used is clumsy to almost a prohibitive extent. They can be fired from ordinary weapons with ordinary propelling forces and therefore have the usual length of range. As we have said Lyddite was employed in the Soudan, especially at Omdurman. An eyewitness says of it: "The howitzers were to fire a charge of Lyddite whose bursting power is equal to 80lbs. of gunpowder. With a very high tra-Tike that of bombs dropped. from rectory the effect would be something
a balloon. Lyddite appears to be an impartial as well as an energetic explosive; if you stand within 800 behind it, it is as likely as not to throw back a bit of shell into your eye; after which you will use no other. When they tried it at Cairo at knocking down a wall, it did indeed knock down a good deal of it, but left a good deal standing. That, however, was because percussion fuses were used; the delay fuses were all sent up the Nile. By delaying the explosion the smallest fraction of a second, till the shell has penetrated, its devilishness they trusted, would be increased a hundred fold.
This was Lyddite's first appearance in war; we all looked forward to it with keen anticipation. The further forward I looked, personally, the better I should be pleased."
Other correspondents referred to the awful effects of these shell when they came to be used against the masses of Dervishes hurled by the Khalifa at us on the eventful Omdurman morning. The reference to the high trajectory of the howitzers throwing these shells will explain their peculiar value in South African warfare. The Boer loves cover. He delights in the boulder-strewn tops of the African highlands. There he feels at home. Prone upon the earth with nothing exposed but the crown his wide-awake, with a solid rest
side and his flanks secure, he for his trusty rifle, with friends along-could fight for days. With little chance of being hit, he had no fear, with the complete mastery of his weapon, and his skill in judging distance which in times gone by he had to perfection, he was an opponent whom none could despise.; has fallen off. There may be local Recent reports say that his shooting {reasons for that. Game may have become scarce, and town life may have begun to tell, but it is poate that the new explosive as done its share by its mnerveshaking devilment. "With a very high trajectory the effect would be something like that of bombs dropped from a balloon." So writes the correspondent quoted above, and this bears out the remarks of other eye~ witnesses. Cover under such circumstances is of small avail. When the clouds rain bullets and the atmosphere is filled with poisonous fumes men may be excused if they do not hit a moving target half a mile or more away.
As to the morality of the thing, and the ground for General Joubert's protest, opinions differ. There be some who would make war with rose-water; others would shrink from the use of nothing that promises the annihilation of a foe. In all probability the latter will in the end be found to have been the true humani-tanans. Sheridan declared that war should be so waged that those who suffer from it should be left nothing but their eyes to weep their loss. Then, he said, wars would soon cease.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.