Evening Republican, Volume 18, Number 210, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 September 1914 — Page 2

SUBMARINES TO DRIVE BATTLESHIPS FROM SEAS

——HO eminent an authority as Admiral Sir Percy Scott of the British Navy declared the other day that the doom of the dreadnaught had been sounded by the development of submarines. He asserted unequivocally W that even the superdreadnaughts were archaic and that experiments had proved conclusively that no fighting ship was safe from the attack of the submarine day or night. Why, then, spend millions for armorclad titans ? he asked. The pronouncement is the more impressive because Admiral Scott has probably done more than any other living naval nlan to make the battleship the offensive fighting machine it is today. By a system of director firing he improved the capability of making hits quite 100 per cent, and showed how a C whole battery of monster rifles could be manipulated as a unit and the tremendous salvo brought to bear upon a distant target with amazing ' precision. In a word, he made the dreadnaught a wonderfully formidable 'instrument of and yet today, in the - face of that unparalleled rec- . ord, he says: “I see no use for battleships.” ’ - There is in this country an J#' 1 ** 1 ; ♦, authority of a kindred way of :-. y thinking, Simon Lake, who has done a great deal toward making the submarine what it is. In substance, Simon Lake anticipated Admiral Sir Percy Scott by many years in predicting the passing of the heavy ships of the battle line. He was asked the other day for his opinion of the British admiral’s sweeping views. “I still believe, as I always have, that the submarine will drive the heavy armored battleship from the seas,” he replied, “and that it will be the means employed by all countries with a seaboard to prevent invasion from the sea. “The partisan of the battleship points with reasonable pride to the spectacular performances of his giant turret guns, and he tells you of the many Inches of hardened steel that the points of his armor-piercing projectiles can perforate. Truly these doings are little short of marvelous. But the advocate of the gun is a prejudiced expert withal, for he will not believe the torpedo to he a formidable rival. Why? Simply because generally he takes little interest in this grder of weapon. “But the torpedo is coming into its own. It is an instrument of precision and stupendous destructive might. Where it could not travel more than 1,800 yards with any chance of hitting the. target a few years back, it can now cover a distance of 12,000 yards and make that run at an average of nearly 30 knots. “In some particulars it is even more accurate than the gun. It travels far enough below the surface to be unaffected by the state of the sea. With its warhead charge of several hundred pounds of high explosive, attacking a ship where she is least prepared for assault, the detonation of that substance will caiise a far greater wound than it is possible to produce with a number of the biggest projectiles. "Yes, I think Sir Percy Scott is right, and his admission means much more because it comes from an expert who has heretofore favored the gun and the dreadnaught. "What do I think of the submarines of the future? How big do I think they will be? Well, I have done some prophesying in the past and have been frankly pooh-poohed by the unbelievers, so you will understand my present reluctance to predict just how large submarines will eventually be built. There are mechanical problems that must be overcome first. The development of the submarine has not been as rapid as I anticipated, and this has been due to the difficulty of securing satisfactory engines. “The gasoline engine has been somewhat dis- _ credited as a motor for underwater boats because of the explosive character of its fuel. We have had a number of distressing accidents due to the unexpected ignition of the fumes of gasoline. Yes, the heavy oil engine promises to meet the needs, but there has' been a good deal of difficulty in securing a reliable heavy oil, reversible, Internal (Combustion engine. Thank>to the genius of Dr. Rudolf Diesel, tjie way to success has been blazed, and as the heavy oil engine evolves the size and the speed of submarines will increase proportlon“As a matter of fac| we greMy Iniplnd

submarines of 2,500 tons, with the speed of a battleship, and it may be possible to build them of a speed equal to that of the fast cruisers, but the handicap in properly engining them has caused us to hesitate in putting propositions forward for their construction. The moment a reliable engine is provided that will furnish a speed equal to that of the surface vessel, of whatever type such sur- ' face vessel may be, that moment surface vessels of that order will become obsolete for purposes of war; their only use will be to train seamen and to carry the flag in times of peace. “How did I begin my work in submarine navigation? Well, the story is not a long one. Of course, you will expect me to tell you that Jples Verne’s ‘Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea’ was my inspiration, and you shan’t be disappointed. From my boyhood days that scientific romance gripped me irresistibly, and I was not mgre than nineteen when I began experimenting in a crude way. “It was then 1885, and I was living at Toms River, N. J, My preliminary investigation was in an overturned rowboat, under which I crawled to see how long I could survive in the air confined close up to the inner bottom of that craft. I stayed there so long that a passing fisherman thought me drowned and righted the boat, expecting to tow it ashore and to report my loss. “In 1893, as you possibly recall, the navy dej&rtment asked for bids for a submarine boat. I the design of one intended to travel on the surface, in between the bottom and the surface or on the, waterbed —a sort of underwater automobile, so to speak. I had no financial backer, and the government exacted that„the successful bidder should put up a bond as a guarantee of contract fulfillment Needless to remark, I did not get any recognition of a substantial sort, but I did obtain favorable comment from some of the official critics. That at least, gave, me encouragement. “Shortly afterward I moved to Atlantic Highlands, and there, thanks to the financial assistance of an aunt, I built the submarine which I jokingly named Argonaut That was in 1894. The Argonaut, Jr., was a coffinlike box built of yellow pine timber in two layers, coated with coal' tar and lined with felt to make it water tight. It was 14 feet long, feet wide and had a depth of 5 feet It was mounted upon wooden wheels. “The vessel was intended to navigate only on the bottom and was driven by hand power; a crank shaft, ending Outside with sprocket wheels, was geared by a chain belt to the two rear drivers. Inside, the bow part of the boat was partitioned oft by an air-tight, bulkhead which made the foremost compartment a veritable dlylng bell, with a water-tight door in the floor that could be opened. "For air storage the boat carried a soda water tank, and a plumber's hand pump did duty as an air, compressor. When the confined air reached a suitable pressure the bottom door could be dropped without fear of the water coming in when the Argonaut, Jr., was submerged. ‘The craft w on Christmas day of

THE EVENING REPUBLICAN, RENSSELAER. IND.

1894 and then launched, but she was not in the water more than a quarter of an hour when a sudden jtorm swept her ashore and damaged one of the wheels. When the spring of 1895 came I was face to face with something of a problem. The Argonaut, Jr., was at the bottom of 14 feet of water and partly buried in soft mud. My task was to refloat her and to make her ready for further experiments and for demonstrations looking to the interesting I of very much needed capital. Now, regular diving •suits are an expensive matter, and my furfds were so extremely low that I had run around well nigh barefooted during the winter in order that every penny available could be used in connection with my embryo sub- \ marine. \ “When milder weather came I \ had ready a diving dress of my own devising. For a helmet I utilized a framework of light iron rods covered with painted canvas and niade it fit snugly over - j my shoulders' and to strap under my arms - For a face plate I used the glass deadlight from the air port of an abandoned sloop, and to help me to submerge I tied sash weights to my legs. Common garden hose wound with wire served to carry my air supply from the surface. In this fashion I reached the Argonaut, Jr., closed her up and put in pipes to pump her out. In my anxiety to succeed I toiled under water for several hours, and in consequence spent the better part of a week in bed afterward. Ih that brief time I lost 40 pounds in weight, but I didn’t mind that because the boat was afloat again. “The Argonaut, Jr., was not designed to submerge deeper than 20 feet, and my main object in building her was to show how a craft of that nature could be made to travel around on the bottom and, by means of the diving compartment, make it possible to recover things lying upon the waterbed. To make a long story short, my performances were- so successful that I obtained money and we organized a company in November of 1895. But we did not have funds enough to build the big boat I had planned, and accordingly we had to curtail our ambition and confine our efforts to a smaller craft for

the purpose of demonstration and as an inducement to additional capital. Fortunately I won the confidence of the late William T. Malster of Baltimore, then president of the Columbian Iron works and afterward mayor of the town. “The Argonaut was a cigar-shaped structure of steel, 36 feet long and 9 feet of beam, and was fitted with an 80 h. p. gasoline engine, a dynamo, an air compressor, a searchlight, water ballast pumps—the apparatus necessary for successful submarine navigation. She had accommodations inside her for a crew of five, and during 1898 a cruise of more than 2,000 miles was made in the Chesapeake bay and on the Atlantic coast, traveling both on the surface and submerged, and over all kinds of bottom. That boat, designed for commercial purposes, was the pioneer of a larger military underwater craft which we built In Bridgeport some years later. “As far back as 1901 I offered our navy department a boat that could carry guns in addition to torpedoes. I was generally laughed at, as I was -'for my bottom-traveling wheels. As you know, most of the big British submarines now carry guns and other nations are profiting by those examples. The big boats built by me in Russia for the czar’s navy were designed to have this very feature. v “In view of the actual advances, and. knowing the Increasing destructive might of the torpedo, I find no difficulty in subscribing to Admiral Sir Percy Scott’s prediction. Yes, of course, the idea is of revolutionary portent, but with the gun to batter her above water and the torpedo to do even greater damage below, what chance of surviving has the accepted order of dreadnaughts.? “The Proctor was the first underwater craft to provide comfortable quarters for her crew and to be equipped with cooking facilities in. order that they might live aboard of fier. Elven so, the ruling spirit of our naval board of inspection in 1903 pooh-poohed this provision, declaring that a mother ship would always be necessary and that the men would, live aboard the larger craft. How far that mistaken authority erred can be gathered from the performance of a sister boat. “After that little vessel became part of the czar'k fleet she made a run from Kronstadt to Llbau in October of 1905. The official report of the commander of the vessel best tells the storyi “ “This trip confirms once more the good seagoing qualities of boats of this particular type, as several times we were out in cold weather and exposed to high winds and heavy seas, yet, notwithstanding these conditions, the submersible stood the weather every time quite easily. At one time, for 24 hours, by reason of the violence of the wind ■and the nature of the sea. It was not possible to *pass food from the convoying vessel. During that period the deck was swept by heavy seas -and the crew were able to take the air only on top of the conning tower; but notwithstanding this when I proposed to them the next day that they might go over to the convoy If they liked they again .asked permission to remain on the submersible.’ "Yes, the underwater craft are coming into their own.”

FOR BREAKFAST OR LUNCH

Many Easily Prepared Delicacies That Will Appeal to the Most Dainty v Appetite. Currants can be used with oranges and raspberries. Cut sweet oranges in small cubes. Add plenty of sugar to their juice to make a thick, sweet sirup. Prepare currants by washing, drying and stemming them, enough to equal the measure of orange pulp, and red raspberries to the same measure. Chill them all, the currants in the orange Juice and sugar. Just before they are to be used, mix them and put four or five tablespoonfuls of the mixture into each sherbet glass, in the bottom of which is a tablespoonful of sUvered ice. Cherries can be stoned and chilled and served in sherbet cups, with a sirup poured oter them. The sirup should be made from water, sugar and lemon juice in the proportion of a cupful of granulated sugar to the juice of two lemons and half a cupful of water, boiled together for about two minutes. Banana dice, orange dice and pineapple dice, equal measures of each, make a good combination. Put them in a bowl and over them pour some sirup made Of equal parts of sugar and water boiled to a hair, and pour also orange, lemon and preserved pineapple juice, about a cupful of the Juice to three cupfuls of fruit and a half cupful of sirup. Chill and heap in sherbet glasses, with a little grated cocoanut sprinkled on top of each. Peaches, also, can be diced, chilled and served in sherbet cups with just enough grape juice put over them to flavor them slightly. Watermelon cut in dice, chilled thoroughly and then plied in sherbet cups with shaved ice makes a tempting appetizer.

Diced pineapple, very lightly sweetened, is sometimes used as an appetizer in sherbet cups.

Quick Quilting.

A home' worker tells of her quick method in quilting. She says: “Try this .and you will never go back to the old way: Prepare a quilt or’comforter for tacking.- Be sure it is taut in the frame. Thread a large darner with the cord you choose to use. Tie the first knot, but do not cut it. In about two Inches proceed as if to make another knot, only this time do the weaver’s knot with the needle. Do this clear to the end of the Comforter, then cut between each space, and your work is done. This is perfectly original with me.”

Tomato and Lettuce, Nut Mayonnaise.

Add to a cupful of good mayonnaise two tablespoonfuls of fine chopped nuts. Arrange on Individual plates or shells two or three heart lettuce leaves and set on each one a small round peeled tomato with a little of the center scooped out Dress with a liberal spoonful of mayonnaise, letting it stand heaped up above the tomato. At a recent lawn fete the salad was served in small fluted scallop shells, a larger shell filled with cheese crackers being passed with the salad. ,

Stuffed Tomatoes in Paper Cases.

Cut top from even-sized red tomatoes. Scoop out the center, drain off superfluous juice from pulp, then add salt, pepper, a little minced green pepper, a few drops of onion juice, a pinch of sugar and if desired a drop of tabasco sauce. Fill center of tomato, put on the top, then set tomato in a paper case and wrap in waxed paper. The little paper cases or cups can be bought where they sell paper novelties or picnic supplies.

How to Utilize Turnip Cups.

As a little variety in serving vegetables try small peas or lima beans packed in turnip cups set in cream sauce. Peel and scoop out turnips and after boiling the shells transparent they are ready to fill. » Remember in cooking fresh peas to put them in a pan of cold water for half an hour after shelling. Boil them in salted water (not too much water) and cook until tender;

Stained Marble.

A little turpentine added to some lukewarm water will successfully remove all stains from marble washstands. If the marble is much stained and soiled boll equal parts of soap a!nd powdered whiting—about four ounces of each —with one ounce of soda in a little water. When thoroughly blended lay the mixture on while hot; let it remain a day or so. Wash off with clean water and dry with a leather.

Salt Extracted.

It is an easy matter to drop too much salt in the potatoes or peas. To remove the salt stretch a clean cloth over the vessel and sprinkle a tablespoonful or more of flour on the cloth and allow the contents to steam. In a short time the flour will have absorbed the salt

To Whip Thin Cream.

When whipping cream that Is too thin to whip, a very 'good plan is to place the dish containing the cream into another dish of cold water and leave it there until’ It is well chilled. Then put it into a pan hot water and it will whip without difficulty.

Loose Handles.

To fasten the handles which have become loose on cupboard doors or oureau drawers warm some powdered Alum In an old Iron spoon and apply it to the handles. - v

VARIETY OF RECIPES

FAMILIAR VEGETABLES TO M SERVED IN NEW WAYS.

Spinach and Mushroom Mold Quite a. Substantial Dish for Lunch or Dinner Cauliflower a La Pocono —Melba Salad.

By LIDA AMES WILLIS. Boiled Borecole or Kale. —Use half a peck of kale. Strip the leaves from the stems, choosing qnly the crisp and • curly leaves. Wash through two waters and drain. Boil tot 20 minutes in salted water, then turn into a colander and let cold water run over it Drain again and chop fine. Brown a small onion in a tablespoonful of butter.

Spinach and Mushroom Mold. —Boil the spinach a few minutes, as directed in preceding recipe. Drain, squeeze, dry and chop fine, pressing through a colander with a potato masher. Put a tablespoonful of butter and a few drops of lemon juice in a saucepan and let the mixture bubble for a few minutes; then turn • it into a dish to cool. When cold mix with two beaten eggs. Press into a buttered' border mold, or place a small bowl or dish in an ordinary mold to leave an empty space in middle. Bake about an hour in slow oven. When done turn out on to a heated diph fill the empty space in center with mushrooms cooked tender in butter and few tablespoonfuls of cream and little flour thickening added. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Add a lllttle squeeze of lemon juice if you like. Spring Beans, alia Roma. —Choose young, tender string beans, cut off the ends and remove the strings, but do not cut them, unless they are more than three Inches long. Wash well in cold Water, letting it run over them into the, colander. Put then? into a baking dish with a kitchen spoonful of good| salad oil, a little minced onion, parsley, salt and pepper. Cover and place over the Are and cook slowly. As the beans dry, add the strained juice from ripe tomatoes, or a thin tomato sauce. Watch that they do not burn, as only enough tomato juice should be added to keep them moist Cauliflower a la Pocono. —Select a fine young head of cauliflower, remove the outer leaves; cut in several pieces and wash well in cold water. Tie in a piece of thin cheesecloth, put into a pot of boiling water and boll quickly for 25 minutes or half an hour, unutll it is quite tender. Remove carefully without breaking it, and lay on nicely toasted bread, well buttered. Make a half pint of white sauce, using chicken stock, if you have any on hand, and /Balt and pepper to taste. When it bolls up, add some button mushrooms chopped fine, and cook a few minutes longer. Remove from the fire and add the wellbeaten yolks of, two eggs, a little grated nutmeg and the juice of half a lemon. Vinegar may be used in place of the lemon. Do not let the sauce boll after, adding the egg. Melba Salad.—Get the Italian peas if possible; if not, use a large variety of peas while young and tender. Have a cupful of cubes of apple and half a cupful of celery dice blanched in cold water, acidulated with lemon juice. Seed and cook half a cupful of fine, large raisins. When about to serve, drain and dry the apple and celery and mix with the peas and raisins. Make a French dressing with good oil, lemqn 'juice, salt, pepper and paprika. Beat up thick and light colored and pour over the salad with garnish of lettuce leaves. Tarragon vinegar goes well with this salad, used in place of lemon juice. For a change, try grating a tart apple into the dressing. This gives it more body and a delicious flavor.

Green Corn Fritters.

Score the kernels lengthwise with a sharp knife, then with a dull edge press out enough pulp to make one cupful. Add the beaten yolks of two eggs, one-eighth of a teaspoonful of pepper, a dash of cayenne, one-third of a teaspoonful of salt, one scant cupful of pastry flour, mixed and sifted with one rounded teaspoonful of baking powder and finally fold in the stiffly beaten whites. Drop from a spoon in deep hot fat, fry until brown, and drain on brown paper before serving.

Snowflake Cake.

Cream one-quarter cupful butter and one cupful sugar, add one-half cupful milk, one and two-third cupfuls flour. Into which sift two and one-half teaspoonfuls baking powder; add the well-beaten whites of' two eggs and one-quarter teaspoonful almond extract. Bake about forty-five minutes.

To Set Colors.

In washing anything blue, put a handful of salt into the water; green, a lump at alum; gray or brown, a little ox gall; tan or linen goods, a little hay water; reds and pinks, use a little vinegar.

Gold Chains.

I always clean my gold chains In the following manner: Put the chains In a bottle of warm soapsuds to which a little prepared chalk has been shake until clean, then rinse in clear, cold water. —Exchange. - ~v ~

Substitute Tins.

If layer cake tins are lacking tn the kitchen equipment, lard pall lids, make a good substitute. The Inner flat covers are also useful on which to bake biscuits, cookies or drop cakes.