Show A mighty struggle has been made to perfect the disappearing gun carriage for the strongly fortified posts of our seacoasts This class of guns has cost nearly 50000000 of the SG5000000 for coast defenses appropriated by Congress Con-gress some ten years ago It is now practically admitted that that style of gun carriage is a failure and that the War department must revert to the European practice of mounting coast lefensc guns en barbette The outcome out-come is liable to be what Gen Sheridan Sheri-dan recommended in his lifetime the building of low earthco crcd torts vith embrasures for cannon because nothing stops a shell or a cannon shot like a sandbank and there Is no way of running a war without exposing men more or less Our battleships arc supposed to be Invulnerable to any guns yet Invented and still In evry fight so far the commanders of those ships except on the monitors have gone out and taken their chances Every one of the commanders at Manila Ma-nila bay and offlSanliago stood outside out-side while the firing cpnllnued The true principle seems to be to make a better gun than the enemy can to fire It more rapidly than the enemy can and more accurately and In the meantime mean-time before the enemy is convinced of the superiority of the guns and gunners gun-ners to take chances From the first the rule of war has been that somebody some-body must be hurt and it has not changed |