Show missionWAR WAR MICROBE IS BUSY INVENTORS WITH DEADLY DEVICES DE-VICES PESTER CONGRESS One Suggests Greasing Sides of Battleships Bat-tleships to Deflect MissilesHigh Explosive Shells and Military Balloons Offered Washington Thick as tho locusts which plagued 1 Egypt or the grasshoppers grasshop-pers which pestered Kansas are tho cranks and Inventors in whoso brains buzz and whirr tho bacilli of destruction destruc-tion who are swarming about the cap Itol nod Insisting that congress take up their Inventions They are tho geniuses who have evolved plans for wiping out a largo share of the human race in case of war They aro prepared to obliterate whole armies and sink battleships like more pleasure craft If their Inventions mo accepted by tho government and turned loose on the enemies of Uncle Sinn Ilobnbly thero never has been a time when congress was so besot with such Inventors as It Is now and tho naval affairs committees and tho military mili-tary committees are beleaguered by them Some scientist has advanced tho theory that a red corpuscle of a special spe-cial variety Is at work on tho human race exciting It to war and stirring up sanguinary trouble on n great international in-ternational scale Evidences exist that this theory Is not far out of tho way At any rate an extraordinary number of folk haunt tho capital nowadays nowa-days who are anxious to bo allowed to demonstrate how largo segments of the population can bo obliterated by tho use of tho right kind of weapons Inventors of of I now types torpedoes are numerous Indeed mucl iof tho inventive genius of those who would enhance the terrors of war is centered on naval warfare It some of tho In ventois are justified in their assertions asser-tions torpedoes of an efficiency which will make navies almost useless have been developed I High explosive shells are also tho subject of much invontlvo attention Shells of a typo which will crush tho armor of a Dreadnought at tho Ills titmice 6f six or seven miles as if tho armor were an eggshell have been devised de-vised according to their Inventors and promoters It is well known that In recent years wherever soiyo new defensive idea has been developed in naval construction con-struction a now offensive Idea to overcome it has been immediately forthcoming Just now little is heard of the Inventors of defensive elements In naval or land warfare The trend Is all toward tho offensive toward moro deadly types of guns shells another an-other projectiles Of course inventors of military balloons bal-loons and airships aro much in evidence evi-dence Each ono is confident that ho has evolved plans whereby it will bo possible for tho armies of this country coun-try to soar up In tho empyrean and wipe out all their enemies before breakfast simply by dropping explosives explo-sives among them Ono Inventor has evolved the idea of a torpedo which carries a gun inside in-side of It On striking tho sldo of a ship tho torpedo explodes and this explosion ex-plosion In turn fires tho gun which Is supposed to wipe out tho battleship battle-ship Then there Is a torpedo with a double explosive capacity tho Idea being to make useless tho chain of netting protection which Is sometimes employed to keep warships from being be-ing torpedoed A man from California has written to some of tho members of tho house committee on naval affairs suggesting that It tho sides of a battleship were greased It would lessen tho ability of projectiles to Inflict dnmago This Idea has been referred to Secretary Metcalf for what It Is worth The advocate ad-vocate of it found that when his hammer ham-mer was greased he could not drive a nail and ho thought application of the principle to a battleship 1 may be useful The application of oil to the sides of a torpedo is another suggestion made This may prove practicable as most of the resistance to tho passage pas-sage of a torpedo or a boat through the water Is due to tho friction between tho surface of tho moving body and the water Immediately In contact with that surface 011 would tend to lessen les-sen this friction and hence increase the speed of the torpedo The favorite argument offered for tho consideration of congress by the Inventor of some alleged deadly I engine en-gine of destruction Is that it will help to make war impossible It this does not servo the purpose then there Is tho argument that high patriotic duty ought to lead to tho adoption of the invention in question as a sure way to the discomfiture of all the enemies of the Republic |