UPPER: FIRING A MORTAR GUN, FORT TOTTEN, LONG ISLAND, AUGUST 26, 1915.
LOWER: GENERAL VIEW OF PIT A AT FORT TOTTEN, IN NEW YORK HARBOR.
These are the new designs of twelve-inch mortars. As will be seen by the photograph, the mortars are behind the bank, entirely out of sight. The range finder is shown on the embankment. He telephones to the gunner the location and distance of the enemy’s ship, and a shot is aimed with the accuracy and precision of mathematical calculation. The upper gun is firing at a target six miles away, but the range of the guns is much greater than this. It is claimed that at a sufficiently high angle, the projectile, weighing seven hundred pounds, can be thrown a distance of thirty-one miles effectively; and when the shell is at the highest point, it will be seven miles up in the air.
Millions of our fellow men in the various nations are occupied in devising, building, experimenting, and practicing with the awful engines of death of this character. Human “enlightenment,” and our “boasted civilization,” and our much-talked-of “brotherhood of man,” do not stop it. Those who have read their Bibles to the proper purpose know perfectly well what it all means.
