The Gisborne Standard AND COOK COUNTY GAZETTE Published every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday Morning. Saturday, January 24, 1891. SMOKELESS POWDER.

Gisborne Standard and Cook County Gazette, Volume IV, Issue 561, 24 January 1891, Page 2

The Gisborne Standard AND COOK COUNTY GAZETTE Published every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday Morning.

Saturday, January 24, 1891. SMOKELESS POWDER.

Be just and fear not; Let all the ends thou aim'at at be thy country’s, Thy God's, and truth's.

The German Emperor, in expressing his opinion on the question of a disarmament of the Powers, makes public his belief that the introduction of the new smokeless powder will render war impossible. How he arrives at such a conclusion is not mentioned, and therefore we must think it out for ourselves. In the first place, of course, there is the question as to how far the innovation will justify the opinion entertained as to its effectiveness. High military authorities warmly approve of it, while many are to be found who think that it will be of little use in a practical test. If the powder has not yet been so prepared as to ensure its utility in the work of destruction, every year will bring it nearer to perfection in a progressive age like the present, and it is only a mailer of time when all question on that point will be set at rest. But it is difficult to judge what is UKeiy lu L»v die uuteumc of the new powder, or what the Emperor means, unless it be that in the progression of humanitarian ideas such cold-blooded slaughter as will be possible with the smokeless powder will so shock civilization that in the view of the greater evil wholesale murder will come to be considered quite as criminal as the murder of individuals. Every brave soldier confesses a feeling of nervousness at the outset of a battle, but directly he is let loose to join in the awful carnage he becomes as if intoxicated, caring nothing for the risk he runs and anxious only to slay his enemy. With the new powder, as a German writer in one of the reviews says, the strain on the nerves of the ordinary soldier will be much more severe, since the horrible carnage of the battlefield will be presented to his eye in all its ghastliness, unaccompanied by the intoxicating stimulus of the noise and smell of the powder. Brave men of all nations will soon recoil from murder under such horrible circumstances—call it war or by any other name. This may be what the Emperor means, and his belief is one that will have the sympathy of all men whose hearts are not of stone.

The smokeless powder will make a great difference in tactics, and the movements that were made under cover of the smoke must be replaced by totally different tactics, In naval warfare there will be greater accuracy and rapidity of firing, more guns can be brought into action, the work of torpedoes will be rendered less effective, and the carrying out of the Admiral's orders will be less dependent on fortuitous circumstances. In naval warfare the new powder might be considered a great advantage from a military point of view, but in infantry work there will be a great change when the soldiers lose the inspiriting boom of their own guns, and find that they have to carry on the wholesale murder of their fellowmen without the stimulus and the smell of the old powder. If the new powder leads to the abolishing of war it will be the greatest blessing of the nineteenth century.