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festive Turk, facing Greek
.25 caliber bullets, wrote that
they were delightful in that
the True Believer could so
often ride on one of them to
the houris of the Mohammedan
Paradise. The Russian
in 1904, finding that the Japanese
were tickled with his
huge size as a target for their
.25 caliber rifles, promptly
evacuated position after position
on his way to the Jap-less
regions of upper Manchuria.
Using, m o d e r n sharp-point
bullets, the .25 caliber cartridge
can be made to weigh not more
than three-quarters as much as
the present American cartridge,
which means that the soldier can
carry thirty-three per cent more
ammunition. The cartridge can
be smaller, and more of them
can be put into a rifle magazine
of given size. In actual efficiency
there is no difference.
So our next Yankee rifle—
maybe not so far away as we
imagine—will be a combination
of hand-operated and self-loading
or automatic rifle, with a
magazine holding not less than
ten cartridges, and better yet 15, preferably
.25 caliber instead of .30 caliber, with
the present 24-inch barrel instead of the
unwieldy 30 of many foreign armies. It
will be boxed in completely with wood
for the protection of the hands from the
hot metal, and for the protection of the
rifle from damage. It will operate as the
present rifle for ordinary work, and it
will function automatically when the
pinch arrives, giving a speed of fire
nearly akin to the machine gun. A regiment
so armed could pour in a blast of
jacketed lead without a parallel in the
fire of the highest trained regiment
armed with the present type of rifle.
Our Yankee rifle will have a generousopening
peep sight on the frame close to
the eye like the sight of the sportsman,
not the foolish, hard to see and hard to
OUR RIFLE OF THE FUTURE 545
ejects
the used cartridges automatically.
use open sight of the
European and the present
American rifle. The soldier
will see the front
sight and the mark, the
peep, like all well-placed
peeps, practically taking
care of itself when the
eye is opposite.
Turning out a rifle
which will be duplicated
by the million
for the use of troops
is a ticklish and slow
business. One mistake
is duplicated a
million times, one mistake
trots along in
twenty million
dollars' worth of
rifles. So far our
own country has
had trouble finding a rifle of the
self-loading type that will stand the
dirt and abuse of the trenches, the
heat of rapid fire that tends to jam a
rifle, that will function both with the
hand and with the automatic mechanism,
and that is simple enough to let the
horny-handed infantry trench-digging,
non-expert private pull it apart without
tools and clean it after an ordeal in mud
and bad weather. Taken all in all,
though we may expect the new rifle before
many campaign weeks have passed
into history, our first European detachment
doubtless will not have it. These
soldiers, whether they are the enthusiastic
mob of volunteers that many agitators
and patriots desire to send to the
trenches, or drafted divisions, will carry
on their shoulders rifles of our oldfashioned
"New" Springfield model.