The Locomotive - Lighthouse Survival Blog

THE LOCOMOTIVE t»5
war, and many raw regiments came there to be drilled before starting for the South.
When the day for the tinal departure of one of these regiments came, the disconsolate
mothers and sisters and sweethearts, and the tearful wives with babies in their arms,
came i" bid the soldiers farewell. The leave-takings were piteous Oh! mosl heartrend-
ing; but tlic soldiers wenl away, and after a time the bodies of many of them would be
returned in boxes, by express, and the loving ones thai had 1
» .-
1 ie. them farewell mi
shortly before were filled with grief inconsolable. I remember these touching scenes
mosl vividly, and thej beggar description. I remember
one morning there were eight-
een bodies received, and I learned that of these not more than three or four had been
lulled by bullets; the others had died from disease and from exposure incident to
hardships of war. I wondered if this fairly represented the proportion of deaths from
like causes throughout the army, and I found, on investigation, that only about one man
in four is killed by bullets in modern warfare. Then I bethought me how a war could
We carried on with fewer nun. and I devisee] a gun that would do the work of a hundred
men. One man mi id it go to the war and work the gun, and the other ninety -nine could
il home and carry on the arts of peace. This was the real incentive I had. so you
seel was not smh a blood-thirsty creature as might be imagined; for I was trying to
save as many as I could of tho - and despair that were 30 deeply gra-
ven on my mind at Indianapolis. The machine-gun ought not to increase the carnage
of war. Imt rather to decrease it. The tactics of armies have been changed to cot
pond with the new appliance-, and niaehine-^uns and sm ok (less powder have done much
to preserve the peace, by making wars almost impossible, or, at least, by giving them
such a forbidding aspect thai few nations would engage in one until the last possibility
a amicable adjustment of differences, 1
» v arbitration, diplomacy, or Otherwise, had
been exhausted."
The following extracts from The Tiroad Arrow, an English naval and military paper
of high Standing, indicate that Mr. Maxim's exhibition at Erith was considered, by
those who ought to know, to be unworthy of him. "Mr. Hiram Maxim may be a very
clever man. but he is certainly nol a wise one. What his object could be in inviting so
many distinguished officers on a wild-goose chase down to Erith, it is hard to imagine.
It can scarcely have been the desire for advertisement, since Hiram Maxim and the
Maxim gun are well enough known without these adventitious aids. If the object
really was to try the cuirass, this cannot be said to have been attained. Only two shots
were tired at it, and these by Hiram himself, with his own rifle and ammunition. .
. .
The scene on the ground was not devoid of amusement. The frantic eagerness of the
marksmen to fire at the breast-plate, and the desperate discursiveness of its inventor
were a curious contrast. . . . We should not have envied the man who was pro-
I by
it [the cuirass] since it seemed to transmit the blow to the dummy on which it
was suspended, for though the effigy was stayed by a timber prop behind, at about the
height of the shoulder, the hat Hew off. Neither shot perforated nor dented the back,
but as we know nothing about the charge and bullet employed, this does not mean
much. . . . .Mr. Maxim had certainly broken his word, since he had promised that
Mr. Lowe should conduct the trial. The second cuirass was fired ;,t with the English
and German service rifles, and resisted the bullets of both, though a three-eighths steel
plate which was hung beside it was easily perforated. ... At this stage the cloth
covering incontinently fell off and revealed the steel plate in all its nakedness. Hereupon
Mr. .Maxim made a speech, attacking Heir Dowe, and German products generally."
That assembly at Erith must have been interesting, from whatever point of view-
one might regard it.