Evening Republican, Volume 20, Number 309, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 December 1916 — Page 3

United States Now Has Deadliest Aerial Torpedoes

Ordnance tests prove Lester Barlow’s invention of immense value in bombing operations :: Inventor now working on flying death machine which will speed 150 miles automatically and hit the-target

Ml HERE seems to be no getting away jM I 1 from the fact that Americans as a 0^ ) nation have a special genius for / ■ \/ mechanical invention. This is true In the V* ) arts of war no less than in those of peace. / ) We are all familiar with the telegraph, \ ' telephone, phonograph, sewing machine, —y machinery, etc., but not most of us know that Americans were first in < the field with the machine gun, armored ship, aeroplane, submarine boat, longrange, high-power artillery, etc., which , European countries at war have developed to their present efficiency In deadliness. As you know, aircraft have been much used In the present conflict. Zeppelins have sailed over London find dropped high explosive bombs. French, British and Italian aeroplanes in great flocks have flown over German and Austrian cities, and Austrian and German planes have flown over Italian and French cities -and showered the earth with torpedoes of enormous de- . structive power. Many thousand Americans, watching the progress of the war arts over there, have become uneasy lest this •country fall behind her competitors and become so far outclassed in the means of defense as to be at the mercy of enemies. But we need not worry ourselves into a tfever, for, according to a writer In the New York World, TJncle Sam’s ordnance experts have “kept still and sawed -wood,” and he tells us about our newest means of defense against a possible enemy: The United States army has a torpedo for dropping from aeroplanes that will do more damage than any of those that have been dropped by - German Zeppelins In mngland or by British or French aeroplanes in Germany. The difference between this and all other bombs Is that It explodes at a certain distance above ground scattering Its fragments horizontally, while the point at which others explode is always uncertain. Existing aerial bombs are of two kinds—one that explodes on contact, the other timed with a fuse to explode in the air. The trouble with the former is that its high ■explosive has a tendency on impact with the earth to hlow downward instead of laterally, thus creating a «reat cavity or crater, but causing comparatively little ■damage. The trouble with the second Is that Its accuracy depends upon the aviator’s calculations as to his altitude, .and also that It Is impossible to set a time fuse to minute fractions of a second.' 1 A bomb dropped from a height of 5,000 feet is traveling at from 400 to 500 feet a second when it reaches the ground, so an error of onetenth of a second in the aviator’s calculation would allow the bomb to explode either 40 or 50 feet in the air or at a ■considerable depth below the ground. This new American bomb overcomes both of these difficulties, for it always explodes between five and six feet from the ground. And it does not matter from what height it is dropped. Nor has the make any calculations.. He need not even know how high up he is. AH he has to do is tv> let the bomb fall; it will do the rest. The inventor of this extraordinary shell Is Lester Barlow, w’ho perfected it under the auspices and at the expense of the American government, at the Frankford arsenal, Philadelphia. Recently the bombs had several . ■official tests at Mineola, L. I. These were made by Lieut. T. S. Wilkinson, U. S. N.; Capt. E. J. W. Ragsdale, U. 8. A., and Lieut. Col. G. G. Gatley, U. S. A., members of the ordnance board. The official report by Col. C. H. Buggies of the ordnance board stated: “The Barlow aerial torpedo is satisfactory; the action certain, tho flight true and the safety devices satisfactory.” At these tests only light charges of explosives were used, because full charges would have endangered houses In the neighborhood. Bombs were dropped from 2,000, 3,000, 4,000, 5,000, 6,000 and 7,000 feet, some with light charges of high explosives, some with black powder. The higfi explosive bombs shook houses three and four miles distant. Letter Barlow is only thirty years old, but he has helped build railways, has worked as a fireman on an ocean steamer, as an electrical apprentice, a gunner in the United States navy, and a wireless operator, and he was on Pancho Villa’s staff as an aviator befdre Villa *yid Carranza split. It was when dropping bombs for Villa that he conceived the idea Of this bomb. The new aerial torpedo Is seven and a half feet long and weighs 100 pounds. It has a streamline form to give the least pos- \ / slble friction while passing through the air. S V The torpedo is carried attached horizontally beneath the aeroplane in traps and is released by the moving of a small lever. It /!/

FROM ALL OVER

One thousand and five tons of Bar le £>uc jellies and jams were imported by this country from the Department of Meuse, France, in 1915. Compan/ G of Madison, First regiment Wisconsin National Guard, has an Egyptian in its ranks. Hi# name is Bamsey Meena. Polish women are renowned for the beauty of their hands. They place gracefulness ot the hands above all charms.

In the southern Pacific a large undersea desert was recently discovered. Over its whole area not a vestige of plant or animal-life could be found. A new shipbuilding plant will be built in Jacksonville, Fla. It is capitalized at $200,000 and will employ 300 men. Dealers In Costa Itica are In the market for American dress gbods, clothing, fancy goods, wrapping paper and paper hags. f~' t - Glass and nails are In demand in Bristol. England. \ ' ' * V ~-v

, THE EVENING REPUBLICAN, RENSSELAER, IND.

Jr // sets itself aftgr it has fallen 300 feet. BeM/ fore being released it is ‘ absolutely nonmt// explosive. / United States aeroplanes now in operation are capable of carrying only two such W. torpedoes, but the government is now butldy ing machines which will be capable of carrying four to six. and plans are on the way for machines that will carry as many at 12. One large battleplane, armed with such torpedoes could pass the length of Manhattan Island and leave a swath of destruction, for each shell is capable of destroj - ing at least one city block. * An important feature about the new war is that, outside of the casipg, .nearly every part can be bought all ready mad# in any wholesale hardware factory. Very little special machinery is necessary. In time of war these bombs could be built by thousands on short notice, and if built in quantities their cost would be below SSO each. Only Mr. Barlow, his attorneys, and the officers of the ordnance bureau know the secret of the mechanism that makes this bomb explode with such extraordinary precision. But it (flay be said that there is nothing electrical about it. And the inventor himself says: “A few days ago my aerial torpedo was officially tested before the army and navy board at Mineola, L. 1., and it proved itself to be one of the most deadly engines of destruction that has yet been produced. The killing radius is more than 1,000 feet in all directions, yet it Is so safe to handle that it is practically fool-proof. The layman Would find it almost impossible to explode it without consulting an expert. Neither electricity nor concussion can explore the torpedo, yet when dropped from air craft, no matter frona what height, it will explode from five to seven feet above the surface of land or wa t er . ** f , “This is the first time that the firing control of aerial bombs or torpedoes has been controlled accurately at a predetermined height. “To get the necessary data that would enable me to design my aerial torpedo, I went through the following experiences: One Mexican revolution, shot at a dozen times or more, hit once, two falls in aeroplanes, one of them laden with dynamite bombs (Floyd Smith, the aviator, was in the plane with me at the time), one broken leg; two bombs exploded,t-aceldentally ten feet from where I stood. “My first experience with falling’ bombs from high altitudes, was In 1914, when serving with General Villa in the Mexican revolution. I was dropping bombs of my own make, cast from car wheels. For making noise, the bombs were quite successful, but they did little damage. I soon became convinced that bombs to be effectively destructive must burst accurately from five to seven feet above the surface of the ground, in order that their fragments might fly horizontally in all directions. “In 1915 I did much experimenting, and in February, 1916, I placed my data before the ordnance department at Washington. Five hours later I walked out with my instructions to go ahead at the government’s expense and build at the Frankfort arsenal, Philadelphia. “The ordnance officers of the United States army are largely responsible for the success of my torpedo. Without their confidence and aid, technical and otherwise, I should fitill be looking for someone to back me. “I am now at work upon a flying torpedo that can be fired from a distance of 150 miles and sent straight to its mark. \ “In France, more than a year ago, an aerial torpedo struck within 600 feet of its mark, after traveling 60 miles. I predict that the flying torpedo will be a reality within one year and that In less than v < two years more than a hundred mil* ~ K —W) lion dollars will be appropriated by U V congress for aeronautical defense of ) (/ the United States.”

✓ Canada’s Mineral Output. Canada’s gold production for 1915 was 916,076 fine ounces, valued at £3,787,394, as compared with 770,374 ounces in 1914, valued at £3,185,009. The production of silver In 1915 was 28,401,735 ounces, as against 27,544,231 ounces in 1914. The total value ■W of the mineral output °* Canada in 1915, including gold, silver, nickel, f/yT - copper and zinc, // was £27,702,750, as (( )) against £25,695,100 rTj- // In 1914.

American-made telephone and telegraph supplies are being purchased by Guatemala. The government has set aside $25,571.41 for this purpose. ’ Exports from Hull, England, to this country in 1915 amounted to $4,004,375. Imports totaled $49,042,014 during the same period. r The United States, Canada, Australia and India are large purchasers of Japanese porcelain. During the first six monwf of 1916 exports <ef this product have reached the total of $2,492,500.

BEEF STEW WITH DUMPLINGS

Either “Aitch w or Shinebone May Bo Used—Vegetables in Plenty Requisite for Success. Use an “altch” bone for this and reserve part for a roast, as the whole bone would make Btew enough for 15 people. However, shinbone can be used if you prefer. Take off enough of the fat to brown the meat and vegetables and let it be trying out while you are preparing the meat. If there is no fat use a little pork fat or drippings. Cut your meat into dice about an Inch large each way, dredge them well with salt, pepper and flour and brown In hot fat. Put in your stewpan. Cut two onions, one small turnip and half a carrot into dice and brown; add to the meat, cover with boiling water and cook until the meat is tender. Remove bone and skim off the fat; add six or eight small potatoes, which have been pared and parboiled. Add salt and pepper to taste. Cook until nearly done and then add dumplings. Dumplings.—One pint of flour, onehalf teaspoonful of salt, two teaspoonfuls baking powder. Mix thoroughly. Add enough milk to make a soft dough. Shape and cook ten minutes in the soft dough. Add salt and baking powder to the flour, and sift ,all so as to mix them thoroughly with enough milk to make a dough you can handle; it will take about a cupful; they can be dropped from the spoon or shaped a little with the hands. The stew should be boiling rapidly when the dumplirigs are added, and continue to boll rapidly while they are in. Do not have so much water or broth in the stew that the dumplings cannot rest on the meat or on the potatoes. If they do not they will be heavy. And do,not put in so many that they will crowd each other, for that makes them heavy also.

JOHN BULL PLUM PUDDING

Recipe That Has Been Popular in England for Many Generations— Sauce to Accompany Dish. One pound each of suet, sugar, currants, raisins, sultana raisins (seeded),, mixed candied orange and lemon peel; one-half pound each of bread crumbs and flour, one teaspoonful each of salt and mixed spices, eight eggs, a wineglassful of brandy. Chop the suet finely and mix in the following manner: Put the twice-sifted flour in a large bowl, add the salt, spice and sugar, then the chopped raisins and currants and fruit peel, then the bread crumbs and the sultana raisins, which aye not chopped. Beat the' eggs together for ten minutes, then strain and add the brandy to them and pour into the bowl. Stir and beat w 7 ell for 25 minutes. Put the pudding into a wellbuttered mold, which must be tied up in a white napkin which has been thoroughly boiled just before using, and floured over the top. Set the mold in a large kettle, cover with boiling water and boil for 13 hours. Pudding Sauce. —One wine-glassful of brandy, two ounces of fresh butter, a cupful of powdered sugar. Set the bptter and sugar near the stove, where they will dissolve, add the brandy and beat thoroughly with an egg-beater. Just before serving set in the top of a teakettle and serve boiling hot

Dove Chicken.

As cooked by the West India creoles, It is most delicious. Boil a large chicken in just enough water to cover It.. When tender remove from the fire and add to the chicken water, a half can of tomatoes, some minced parsley, two red pepper cones, two chopped onions, a little black pepper and enough salt to taste. Stew down to a rich gravy. Then make a stuffing of mashed Irish potatoes, moistened with this gravy, adding a teacupful of raisins; stuff the chicken and brown in the oven. When done, serve with what was left of the tomato gravy. >

Lemon Pudding.

Beat two egg yolks with two cupfuls of sugar. Dissolve four tablespoonfuls of cornstarch in enough water to dissolve it, stir into four coffee cups of boiling water (not hot, but it must be boiling), add juice and grated rind of two lemons, then add the sugar and eggs. Bake in a buttered dish about twenty minutes, then cover with the beaten whites and two tablespoonfuls of sugar. Brown in the oven and eerve very cold.

Pickled Eggs.

801 l fresh eggs one-half hour, then put Into cold water. In have beets boiled until tender, remove skins,' cut in dice form and covered with spiced vinegar. Shell the eggs and drop into the pickle jars. This is an ornamental pickle and considered very good.

Corn Custard.

'One can corn, one pint milk, one tablespoonful butter, one tablespoonful sugar, pne-half teaspoonful salt and two eggs. Mix corn, milk, salt, butter and sugar. Add beaten yolks, then whites, put in buttered dish and bake in moderate oven until firm.

When Pressing Silk.

Always press silk under a piece of muslin to prevent the silk from becoming hard and crackly. First dampen the muslin, and use a moderately hot iron until the .muslin is quite dry.

Butter Substitute.

A great saving may be effected by mixing equal quantities of good margarine and fresh butter. The mixture tastes quite as well as fresh butter.

Bucharest, City of Spies

B ucharest is a city of unrest. Rouraanla lacks repose. The westerner is Immediately confronted by these two factors directly he emerges from the home of Magyar or Slav. They,also indicate, although not adequately explaining, the character of the Roumanian people, says a correspondent of the Philadelphia Ledger, writing before Roumania entered the war. Bucharest is a city of spies. There is an element in the character of the Roumanian that admits of his becoming an able exponent of espionage. The Roumanian trusts nobody, and consequently is not trusted, but it is the manner in which he manages to secure his ends that it is so interesting and often wonderful in its daring and enterprise, two essentials in “intelligence.” Honeycombed as Bucharest is with nationalities, nothing escapes; find the neutrality of the country has played an important part in the great war. On the Calea Victoria representatives of alinost every country in the world may be found slowly promenading. ‘There one may find the observant but silent Jap and the dusky negro, the bronzed German or Austrian officer in mufti, and the American from the oil fields, the Magyar of the plain and the southern Slav, the volatile Frenchman and the calm Scandinavian, the stolid Russian and the quaintly garbed Turk, all mingling and commingling with the decorative uniforms of the Roumanian army and presenting a patchwork of character color and language. Bucharest slumbers not nor does it sleep; it is activity incarnate. Early in the morning, long before the contents of the Minerva Universal or the Dimineatza have been digested, the principal thoroughfares are beset with youths shouting the wares of the sensational Dreptatea. Something has fallen, some catastrophe overtaken the central empires or the entente. The Dreptatea appears to insure conversa-# tion during the lunch; it is an aid to indigestion. Rest and repose are foreign to Roumania. A Good Publicity Center. Having all this in view, it is not very wonderful that Germany, at the outbreak of war, immediately recognized the value of Bucharest as a publicity center. Publicity, what crimes have been committed in thy name! With that clever cunning one now associates with Teutonic newspaper industry in the Balkans, Roumania has been simply inundated with prompt information concerning the failures of the triple entente. Instead of relying upon the effect produced by mushroom newspapers bearing topical names, the Germans captured most* of the established papers, and with them a public ready and receptive, instantly available. The allies have neglected the press factor in Roumania. Conjointly with their press enterprise the Germans utilized to the full the opportunities for espionage afforded by the “Latin island amid a Slav sea.” The-same group of “agents” who negotiated the sale or transfer of the newspapers were responsible for the establishment of the Teutonic spy system in Bucharest. Situated in Strada Cosma, near the end of the Calea Victoria, in close proximity to the German legation, stands an unobtrusive-looking building in a quiet backwater of city respectability. Here the slenthhounds of intelligence deposit their news, where it is submitted to minute examination before being forwarded to Berlin; here all instructions are given, and skulking along by the shade of the high wall may be seen from time to time the disturbing figures of diplomatic life bent upon errands of International Import

This much must be said for the “system” in Burcharest; it carries on its work with flagrant openness and apparent unconcern. Teutonic espionage in Bucharest has one point In its favor; it is controlled by one hand and from one center. Instead of having much tiresome overlapping the Germans assumed control, and Austrian, Turk and Bulgar were subordinated to the übiquitous Teuton. - . ;■ It has another feature that on the face of it appears to be commendable. There is a very intimate connection betv/een the departments of statte. or,

MILITARY REVIEW IN BUCHAREST

rather, in “intelligence” they are but one. The right hand of diplomacy knows what the left hand is doing—and approves. It is conceivable that much time and money may be wasted by having p diplomatic “intelligence,” an admiralty “intelligence” and a war office “intelligence,” for there is always the possibility of friction and jealousy betweep the departments apart from other things. In Bucharest, at least, the central powers have centralized “intelligence.” Agents in the Case Royal. The types employed are of the usual bewildering order. There is thd illclad ex-police official, with his heavily silvered cane and inevitable bowler hat, the scantily paid journalist, well trained in the uses of blackmail; the alert restaurant waiter, the sleek hotel proprietor and chef de reception; a horde of impecunious government officials, postmen and telegraphists, the owners of the case chantants and the women therein, and a host of debtladen officers of all ranks, marshaled and manipulated by the naval and military officers detailed —In musti — to keep their country well-informed. At the tea hour the Case Royal is full of agents. This is one of the busiest? cases in Europe. All languages are spoken, all countries catered to. To those with an eye for signs and an ear for strange tongues, together with an instinct for the esoteric, no more fascinating |ife center exists. So continuous is the procession that passes to and from the entrance that appearance and re-ap-pearance are virtually unnoticeable. Every conceivable form of recognition is adopted. You may find picturesquely garbed Roumanians. from frontier villages interested In 'contraband turning up at aperitif hour; and diplomatic underofficials with messages from a superior.

DANUBE PORT OF BUCHAREST

Giurgevo Was Established by Genoese Merchants on a Site That Is Historic. Giurgevo, the Roumanian border city from which the Bulgarian town of Rutschuk, on the south bank of the Danube, was bombarded not long ag<v is the center of trade between the two countries in peace times and is the southern terminus of the first railroad built in Roumania, (1869), the line running to the capital, Bucharest, 40 miles to the north. With Smarda, two and a half miles distant, it Is the Danube port for Bucharest and for all the rich corn land which lies between the two cities, says a bulletin of the National Geographic society.

Occupying the site of ancient Tbeodorapolis, founded by the Emperor Justinian and named by him for his famous actress wife, daughter of a bearfeeder of the amphitheater at Constantinople, the present city of Giurgevo was established by Genoese silk and velvet merchants of the fourteenth century, who edjoyed the highly profitable patronage of the finery-loving nobles of this rich agricultural district The name is derived from Genoa’s patron saint San Giorgio. A short distance north of Gldrgevo therp'is a narrow defile which to Roumanians is one of the most hallowed spots In t|ie e kingdom, for here Michael the Brave in 1595 made a stand which native historians compare with Thermopylae. A tiny band of patriots withstood the onslaughts of a Turkish army overwhelmingly superior'in numbers. The Roumanians achieved a notable victory, their adversaries leaving three pashas dead upon the field and the grand vizier himself barely escaping death In the neighboring marshes. In the Turko-Itussian war in 1771 the capture of Giurgevo was one of the few successes of the.decaying Ottoman power. Below this city the Danube widens until it Is three miles from bank to bank, while in midstream are many islets, overgrown with willow trees, la .early summer the adjacent plains, presenting a most delightful prospect to the eye, are described by one traveler as “a never-ending succession of pasture lands, so rich, so verdant, so luxuriant that one might fancy they were the reality of the Indian’s dream of paradise, where the green hunting fields have no end.”