New Britain Herald Newspaper, November 23, 1915, Page 14

ntire Nation Inte Photos by American Defense Coclety. rested In —The United States destroyer McDougal. 2—A German Zeppelin. 3.—One of the newest types of French aeroplane. 5.—One of the new British 7.—Another view of Mary. of Lion type. seaplanes. HE American Defense society, with headquarters in New York, is conducting a vigorous campaign to secure large ap- opriations for a bigger and better vy. This league is pointing out the fects in our navy and compares the ips to those of foreign powers. [The British battle cruiser Queen ary is the costliest battleship in the! jorld. The United States has not a‘ gle battle cruiser, the newest class battleship. The Queen Mary car- les 8 13.5-inch guns, besides 16 4-inch ns, and can develop a speed of parly thirty knots an hour, depend- g rather on speed than armor. pan’ owns four ships of this type. Dne of these powerful ships,” writes enry Reuterdahl, “could in one woop crush our entire Pacific fleet, estroy our solitary drydock at Olon- | lapo, in the Philippines, cross the sea Ind raid every unfortified city on the acific coast from Sitka to San Diego, eanwhile coaling in our own ports, nd nothing of ours could overtake or 4.—Bri war planes the Lion. ish battle cruiser Queen 6.—British battle cruisers 8.—One of the new British The United States has, at the most favorable estimate of the American Defense society, a baker's dozen sea- planes, most of which are unfit for war duty. According to Henry Woodhouse of the American Aero club, we need altogether, for army and navy, at least 2,000. ‘We also need the newest types of aero- planes, capable of very high speed. The United States has at present eleven biplanes and eight ordered, but has not actually got an aeroplane that can fly under war conditions. The French had about 1,500 at the outbreak of the war, the English and Germans almost as many. Altogether, includ- ing seaplanes, we have less than twen- ty, according to the American Defense | society. | A German Zeppelin photographed at the Berlin field before the outbreak of the war is shown above. This is the | type which has been raiding London and the English coas! The United States has one dirigible now under construction for purposes of military estroy it.” use. The Atlantic torpedo flotilla is the most war ready unit of our navy. We have forty modern destroyers; but, ac- cording to recommendations of the gen- eral board of the navy, we should have 192, or four for each battleship. For the first time in the history of the country when not actually con- fronted by war, as was the case in 1898, army and navy experts have apparently adopted the policy of presenting to congress the actual needs of the serv- Plans For Bigger and Better Navy” ice, as demonstrated by the present war. In past years the general board of the navy has made its report—and, on the whole, a consistent report—and the secretary of the navy has thereupon, | with the advice of political leaders in «he senate and house of representatives, decided upon just how little the coun- try would accept. It frequently hap- pened that these recommendations of the secretary, themselves a modification of the general board recommendations, were still further curtailed in cougress| or authorized. until today both army and navy are in the appalling state of unpreparedness which has so roused the whole coun- try. Today, according to all expert naval opinion, the United States needs forty- eight dreadnaughts to enable it to ful- fill its naval obligations, to protect its commerce and to repel an enemy. We have but seven such ships actually in commission, with seven more building SLIDE AT CANAL WILL IMPROVE THE WATERWAY Photo by American Press Association. Latest Slide HE great slide in Gaillard cut of the Panama canal, which has choked that part of the great isthmian waterway with millions of cubic yards of rock and dirt until the channel is only about twenty- five feet in width, while the depth has been reduced from forty-five feet to yarying depths of from three to fiftecn feet, was clearly foreseen as long ago r of last year- 5 In Panama Canal and Ships W g to For months before the sudden plunge | of the great mass into the canal Gen- eral Goethals, governor of the canal | zone, and his assoclates worked day | and night keeping the channel clear, their calculations being such that had ! the slide continued its way slowly the engineering staff would have been able to free the threatened part of the cut as fast as the dirt and rock came into it. ‘ This statement was made by Briga- Pass Through. dier General H. F. Hodges, U. S. A, who until his promotion to his present rank last year was assistant chief en- gineer of the canal and who knows every foot of the waterway from the Atlantic to the Pacific terminals. Gen- eral Hodges, who has kept in close| touch with the situation caused as a| result of the great slide, talked of the| can be stated that instead of irrepa- rably damaging the canal the great slide will in the end make the canial a safer watercourse, and when it is re- moved the danger of a recurrence will to a great extent have been eliminated. “What h. happened,” said General Hodges, “was clearly foreseen as far back as October of last year—that is, we saw that the mass was slowly mov- ing into the prism. It was of course impossible to foresee that it would be so suddenly dislodged and plunge in its entirety into the cut, blocking it to traffic and causing the great tieup. “When it was discovered that the rock and earth involved in the slide were moving the most powerful of dredges were put to work removing the rock and other material as fast as it came into the threatened part of the cut. Al went well, and the dredges were able to keep the channel com- paratively free until in the early part of September the mass of sliding ma- terial suddenly began to move so fast that the block followed. Unfortunately it came with a rush, and the dredges were entirely unable to cope with the situation. The result is what the world has since learned, and the problem now is to get it out. You may rest as- sured the problem will be successfully worked out and the canal, when it is again clear, will be a better canal than it ever was before. “About 10,000,000 cubic yards of mat- ter were involved in the slide. The fact that it was in motion was, as I have stated, known to the canal englneers since October of last year. For months, until the sudden rush of September, the movement was very slow. That it was moving could be detected by the drop- ping particles. The east side of the slide is north of what is known as Gold hill and north of Contractors’ hill on the west, a part of the western area being the site of the old village of Cu- lebra, now occupied by a part of the Panama canal garrison and known as Camp Gaillard. “Since Sept. 20 until the present time the slide has been in continuous mo- tion, the length of the channel ob- structed being about 1,300 feet. The width at the worst point has been re- duced to about twenty-five feet and the depth to between three and fifteen feet. The finished width of the channel at the point where the trouble is will be 300 feet and the depth forty-five feet. These figures indicate the size of the problem confronting General Goe- thals and his men.” FIND CAUSE OF PELLAGRA. To prove the contentions of Dr. Jo- seph Goldberger, a surgeon in the Unit- ed States public health service, that pellagra is caused by a one sided diet, consisting of carbohydrates to the ex- clusion of proteids, twelve prisoners in the Mississippi state penitentiary seven months ago volunteered to be placed on this kind of a diet exclusively. State health officers now announce that |problem confronting General Goethals. For the benefit of the pessimistic it six of the men developed pellagra and that two others showed symptoms, SHELLS OF ARLY in the war, at the first battle of Muelhausen, German prisoners spoke of the fright- ful effect of the French artil- lery. After the battle of the Marne they told the same story, exaggerated, or so it was said, by descriptions of men slain without wounds, asphyxiated by the gas which came from the French projectiles. French infantrymen told of “rows of Germans standing dead in the trenches, no wounds upon them, as if frozen into death.” The German shells, Charles Nordman, a French artillery officer, says, explode on contact with their objective or point of landing, which~is frequently the ground. Part of the explosive force is wasted on the ground, the rest blows up into the air from the bottom of the hole which the shell itself has dug, the sides of the hole limiting the outward force of the explosion. The lines of force of the explosion, then, constitute a danger zone of very limited extent. “When the shell bursts against a wall,” he continues, “the fragments sometimes trace exactly the parabolic form of the explosion, engraving it, often enough, like the tail of a comet against the white wall. The lines of force of the explosion can best be described as a cone, with its point on the ground. A man lying within a yard of the point of explosion has not been touched, the fragments passing over him. “Our explosive shells act very differ- ently,” he says. “They are so con- structed as not to burst on contact with the ground, but, by time fuse, a fraction of a second later. With a flat trajectory like that of the ‘75, the shell strikes the ground at a single angle, merely digging a small furrow and ric- ocheting into the air. The fuse is so made that the explosion occurs at that very instant—i. e,, during the ricochet. “The fragments of the projectile are then scattered in every direction, par- ticularly downward, in a wide circle, producing the terrible deathblow of the ‘75, which mows down and rips to pleces everything in its zone of action. The German shell bursts up- ward from the bottom of a hole, which limits its sphere of efficacy. Our own, on the contrary, burst downward from several yards above the ground, and no dead angle interferes with their effec- tiveness. This is why the ruse, accord- ing to which our men lie down when the German shells drop among them, would not avail the Germans when we get the range. On the contrary, lying down would but expose them the more. “This is not all. For a long time it has been observed and we have fre- quently remarked that a large number of Germans slain by our guns have no visible wounds. They have but this mark—thelr faces are almost wholly black. and this dark mask which it | —e\ s VR The navy is without battle cruisers” and scouts. On going into battle it would be exactly in the position of a man who undertook to fight an oppo- nent blindfolded. We accordingly need a flotilla of at least six swift battle cruisers carrying in their main batteries guns of the highest callber. We also need scout cruisers of the lightest ang, swiftest type to discover the enemy's whereabouts in time of need. The submarine as an engine, of war has not yet been satisfactorily tested out. The success of the German sub- marines, which for so long a time filled the public mind, was mainly against merchantmen. It, of course, goes with- out saying that an equal amount of damage upon the English merchant fleet could have been accomplished by any speedy warship without half of the danger and expense of a submarine had Germany been able to get her war fleet upon the North sea. Still, it is not to be questioned that an adequate fleet of seagoing submarines should be provid- ed for the American navy. We have no submarine in commission yet of the seagoing type, although ten are build- ing or authorized. ‘We have about 30,000 mobile troops in the United States scattered around in a number of army posts, The an- nual appropriation for the needs of the army is $120,000,000, and the total re- cruiting strength is a little short of the authorized legal limit of 100,000 men. This makes the annual cost of every soldier in the United States army.a little over $1,200. The annual cost of every soldier in the Swiss army is $16.50. THE FRENCH The composition of a naval fleet is not a matter of guess- work. Every class of ship has been closely studied, and the number of every class of ship necessary to make an ef- ficient fleet has been accurately de- termined. Thus ory dreadnaught should be protected@y four swift tor- pedo boat destroyer® A total of forty- eight dreadnaughts involves the build- ing of 192 destroyers. We have at present about forty. AND GERMANS COMPARED Photo by American Press Assoclation. Tree Above French Trench Shattered by German Shell, plants on our enemies is the signa- |nevertheless incontestable” M. Nord- ture, instantly recognizable, of our ex- |man lays to the sudden change of air| plosive shell. | pressure which follows the bursl of “I shall not go into these details of | French shells. death; I could give others that mnke' “The liquide, more particularly the one shudder. * * “Many of our enemies, then, fall un- der our guns without really touched by our projectiles. Their death must be ir living attitudes, as if congealed photographer. ~As a rule, moreover. their dark faces show no sign of pain, pbut merely of repose.” These effects, “often contested but : | having been |and tissues, antaneous and with- | out pain, for we find them in the most | about balanced by that of the liquids into | inclosed, some familiar and unfinished gesture. | I have seen several whose pose was |mles slain without apparent woundg by that of living men; immobilized, one |our ‘75's; we generally find the Iimgs would say, before the ‘Don’t move!" of a | burst. blood, which bathe our organism &re contained in light and elastic vessels he says, “in such & Way, that the pressure exerted on these ves els by the surrounding atmosphere “At the autopsies of those of our ene« It is a kind of Instantaneo pulmonary congestion that has done {ti work and which s caused by the ex- tremely swift deflagration of _our plosives.”” ;