Mines; Submarines. The last word in sea-warfare!
Progress--impressively disclosed by this war.
There have been other wars! Wars not inferior in the greatness of the
stake and in the fierce animosity of feelings. During that one which was
finished a hundred years ago it happened that while the English Fleet was
keeping watch on Brest, an American, perhaps Fulton himself, offered to
the Maritime Prefect of the port and to the French Admiral, an invention
which would sink all the unsuspecting English ships one after another--or,
at any rate most of them. The offer was not even taken into
consideration; and the Prefect ends his report to the Minister in Paris
with a fine phrase of indignation: "It is not the sort of death one would
deal to brave men."
And behold, before history had time to hatch another war of the like
proportions in the intensity of aroused passions and the greatness of
issues, the dead flavour of archaism descended on the manly sentiment of
those self-denying words. Mankind has been demoralised since by its own
mastery of mechanical appliances. Its spirit is apparently so weak now,
and its flesh has grown so strong, that it will face any deadly horror of
destruction and cannot resist the temptation to use any stealthy,
murderous contrivance.
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