October 8.
Faxsa impetus has been given to the straggle for naval supremacy by recent successful experiments with big guns, torpedoes and motor-driven machinery. In August it was unofficially announced that the British Admiralty was building a motor-driven battleship that would render obsolete all Dreadnoughts. This statement naturally created some uneasiness owing to the belief that fresh demands for new Dreadnoughis could not be made, if there existed the danger of destroyers tarning them into so much scrap iron. News was then forthcoming that the German Admiralty was constructing amotor- driven monitor that would be able to combat Dreadnoughts. This destroyer, it is stated by the ' J orwirts," will be capable of moving with great speed and will equipped with two sixteen-inch gans, throwing shells that will pierce Dreadnought armour. To counteract the heavy fire that such a vessel would draw, it is necessary to use armour plating of immense thickness and impervious to twelve-inch gun shells. While these vessels are being laid down, the oil-barning destroyer Paulding of the American Navy has attained a speed averaging 32.8 knots during " four hours' trial under perfect conditions, thus almost equalling the designed speed of the British destroyers of the Tribal class. Records in the construction of men-of-war have also been established recently by the Inanching of the battleship-cruiser Lion at Devonport, and of the battleship Orion at Portsmouth. H.M.S. Lion a battleship with a the speed of a liner, and with the launching of this ironclad another stags was reached in the race for concentrated power. The speed of the Lion, it is anticipated, will be thirty knots, or two knots above her contract speed, and she is fitted with the new 13.5 in. gun. H.M.S, Orion marks an increase in displacement over any vessel of the purely battleship type hitherto constructed in England. She will also carry the 13.5in. weapon; in fact every vessel of the armoured type now on the slips in Great Britain will be provided with this powerful gun. 'The torpedo of the Orion, the twenty-one-inch weapon, is claimed to be the most accurate and deadly torpedo' extant. To add to these achievements comes the news that the new cruiser Bristol has exceeded all records, except those of torpedo-boats. Fitted with impulse turbines, she attained a speed of twenty-seven
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.