Fill out, detach, and mail.

Correct address is

NAME

Don't forget the INSTITUTE BOOK SERVICE; any book supplied.

INVENTION IN WAR

By REAR ADMIRAL BRADLEY A. FISKE, U. S. Navy

It was not long ago that the inventor was looked at askance; and it was not until the advent of the great World War that the advisability of utilizing the inventor in war was recognized. Previously, officers had deprecated the idea of attributing much usefulness to him, fearing (and with some reason) that the country might trust too much to invention and neglect to make proper preparation. Now they see that the invention of the best kinds of weapons, methods and instruments should form an important part of the work of preparation.

Inventions, of course, are of numberless kinds and of numberless degrees of novelty, originality and scope. Some inventions, like the bow and arrow, the catapult, the gun, the steam-engine and the telephone, as well as the arts of weaving, writing and printing, were of the highest order in these respects; whereas some of the manifold improvements made on them from time to time have been improvements in such slight detail as hardly to be worthy to be called inventions.

Nevertheless, it can hardly be denied that, in order to produce any new and definite entity, that entity must be created. This does not mean that the materials of which it is composed must be created; for only the Infinite Creator can do that. A new thing may be created out of old materials. We are told by the Bible, for instance, that "the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground."

Most of us carry the idea in our minds that an invention is a mechanical appliance of some kind. That this restricted idea of invention is wholly modern is indicated by Shakespere's exclamation, "Oh! for a muse that would ascend the highest heaven of invention." And all through literature we see constant indications of the idea that invention forms the basis of all great literary work.

In inventing, the first step is made by the imagination in forming a picture on the mental retina. Shakespere says:

"The poet's eye in a fine frensy rolling

Glances from Heaven to earth, and from earth to Heaven;
And as imagination bodies forth

The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen

Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing

A local habitation and a name."

This suggests that in every invention there are three stages: conception, development and production. The analogy between this and the procedure in making the four steps in an estimate of the situation is not hard to see: for when we make a mental effort to picture to ourselves the mission which we wish to accomplish, we do what an inventor does when he pictures to himself with his imagination an invention which he wishes to produce; when we take account of the difficulties in the way and the facilities at our command for overcoming them and reach a decision as to a plan for accomplishing the mission, we do what an inventor does when he takes account of the difficulties in the way and the facilities at his command for overcoming them, and reaches a decision as to what facilities he will use and how he will use them; and when we finally produce a finished plan, we do what an inventor does when he finally produces his invention.

Of course, most plans that have been produced have not been of a high order of invention; but most instruments, poems, novels and schemes that have been produced have not been of a high order of invention. The declaration may be made with confidence, moreover, that invention of a high order has been shown as clearly and importantly in warfare as in any other of man's endeavors, and probably more so. In fact, the most important and original inventions ever made must have been the weapons with which men overcame wild beasts; for the simple reasons that they have been the basis of all subsequent inventions, and that it was because of

them that men were able to start on the upward path to civilization. Without those weapons, primeval man would have been unable to subdue the wild beasts that were stronger than he; and while he was building up a higher and higher civilization, he would have been unable to protect himself and his acquisitions against the savages and barbarians who tried sometimes to steal, and sometimes to destroy, the fruits of his endeavors.

If one follows the narrative of military history, he will see that civilized man was compelled to employ force against the force exerted by barbarians and savages, and that he prevailed by reason of the better weapons, appliances and systems of drill and tactics that he possessed. Now every one of those weapons, appliances and systems had been invented.

But it was not only by means of the things already invented that civilized man prevailed: it was because also of his inventiveness in emergencies. When we read the exciting story of Alexander's conquest of Asia and the still more exciting story of Cæsar's conquest of Gaul, we are continually given instances of how the barbarians, no matter how splendidly they made their first assault or their first defense, found themselves entirely at a loss when the time came for the next move; and that they were invariably thrown into a panic, if a sudden emergency arose and they found themselves confronted with disaster. Alexander, on the contrary (and in a higher degree Julius Cæsar), was never so superb as when such emergencies occurred. Each one of those men, when confronted with a situation that seemed hopeless and that would have been hopeless to other men, immediately invented a scheme that rescued victory from the very jaws of defeat. Each one of Alexander's battles was the carrying out of an invention. Cæsar's campaigns in Gaul were a series of inventions; witness for instance, his campaign against the superior forces of the Veneti mariners, which he won by cutting the halliards of their ships.

We see evidences of the same fruits of invention in Frederick's campaigns-and still more so in Napoleon's. What was the system that Frederick inherited from his father but an invention? What was Napoleon's beautifully neat scheme by which he drove the British out of Toulon but an invention? What was his first campaign in Italy but the carrying out of a plan which he had invented a year before and which the Directory had rejected? What else