KILLING MADE EASY

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Tuesday, April 28, 1885

FromThe Review and Herald, Vol. 62, No. 17

KILLING MADE EASY.

In the time of Napoleon it was estimated that it took 600 bullets to be fired in battle before a man was killed; in other words, every dead soldier represented his own weight in lead. But the recent improvement in fire-arms has added to the efficiency of the soldier. The greater range of the rifle, as well as the rapidity with which it can be fired, has made it thirty-two times as effective as the old smooth-bore. To put it more accurately, a military authority says that the modern rifle is superior to the old smooth-bore in the following particulars: It is eight times more effective in accuracy, two-thirds greater in range and penetration, five times greater in rapidity of aimed fire; while the weight of the cartridges per man has diminished, yet the number that may be carried has been increased. The added efficiency of the heavy guns is no less surprising. The famous Krupp now makes a gun of nine inches caliber and eighteen tons weight which will send a ball through twenty inches of solid iron; and his field-gun, within a range of more than a mile and a half, can be depended upon to put every projectile into a space of less than two hundred square feet. Taking into consideration the breech-loading, rifling, better powder, improved projectiles, the lighter carriages of steel, the science of artillery has been revolutionized; and one battery to-day is more effective than twenty of those so skillfully handled by the great Napoleon. In the next great battles some dreadful engines of destruction will be brought into play. The Hotchkiss revolving gun can fire bursting shells at the rate of eighty a minute. It can pour out a continuous and deadly fire of seventy-five pounds of metal, or 1,200 hits, every sixty seconds. It is fearful to think of the havoc which would be caused by the guns of the future.—Demorest's Monthly.