A GIANT GUN | AdventAI

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Dec 24, 1902

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 28, No. 52.

A GIANT GUN.

[The following editorial from the New York World shows the trend of things in the so-called era of peace.]

THE biggest gun in the world will come floating down the Hudson from Watervliet next month bound for Sandy Hook. Without its carriage it weighs 130 tons—260,000 pounds. It will use 1,000 pounds of powder at a discharge to send twenty-one miles a shell weighing 2,370 pounds. A company of soldiers could use it for breastworks if it lay flat on the ground, for it is more than forty-nine feet long and is fifty inches in diameter at the breech.

This gun has cost about $130,000 in the making. Transportation will add $5,400. And even now it may not stand the tests. If it does it will become one of forty giants for our coast defense.

Of course this monster cannon represents the highest development of the steel-maker’s craft. But to what end is a marvel of modern accomplishment here directed?—In effect, to nothing greater than a tremendous magnifying of the club with which primeval man knocked down an intruder upon his premises. We have to reach further than he did—if we reach at all—and hit harder.

Under the conditions it is a part of discretion to have the club ready. But the hope that it need never be used in earnest is as patriotic as it is humane.