Egg-Shells, Hammers, and Battle-Ships
MR. CHURCHILL, the first lord of the British admiralty, has recently said that a battle between modern ironclads would be "more like a battle between two egg-shells striking each other with hammers" than like a battle between two men in armor striking at each other with heavy swords. He says further: "The offensive power of modern battle-ships is out of proportion to their defensive power. Never was the disproportion so marked." In the light of his illustration, he says to his countrymen: "The awful importance of good gunnery must come home to us — the importance of hitting first, and hitting hard, and keeping on hitting, and the necessity of spending money in arriving at the highest possible efficiency." In other words, the gun power of the modern battle-ship enables it to strike blows that are altogether out of proportion to the strength of its armor to receive these blows. Hence the necessity, from the standpoint of the nations, of keeping to the highest tension, and sparing no expense in reaching top-notch efficiency in speed, as well as in accuracy in handling the guns. For this work of naval gunnery, the insatiable appetite of the war-gods insists upon the very best of our young men. They must be keen, accurate, and efficient both in aiming the guns and in getting the ammunition to them with which they are to be served. In this work, time is counted by fractions of seconds; and the young man who can do his work in a fraction of a second less than some other young man, is the one that is put forward. There must be no "fumbling" nor awkward movements in the gun crews. Those who can not reach the highest standard of mental and nervous and physical efficiency are passed down below to shovel coal, or to do any other less important work, while the very brightest flower of the national manhood must be kept to operate these great engines of destruction. The sanest and the best men and women of the world are rightfully calling for the cessation of this terrible waste in human energy that is training to the highest point of efficiency in destruction. But we are in the time when, as God's word has shown, the war-gods will be driving the nations of the earth furiously toward the great culmination in the battles of Armageddon. Things so luminously plain as the prophecies that point to the meaning of these conditions ought to convince any person of the portents of these times.