Horseless Vehicles May Be Used By the Army

1896

War Horses of Steel

Cavalrymen to Be Mounted on Motor Cycles, Artillery Hauled Without Mules

Horseless vehicles will probably be used in our army before very long. General Miles is now studying the question, and later the army may purchase or have built a horseless vehicle to be tested at one of the posts.

Before many generations, it is predicted, battles will be fought by navies, so to speak, patrolling the land as well as the sea, in ironclad vessels. True, the horseless vehicle, as we now know it, cannot be depended upon to climb fences, run over steep rocks or such obstacles, but it is contended that with these machines in use will come good roads.

The value of movable forts was greatly appreciated in ancient warfare, but modern rapid movements in battle made them useless; but with these forts propelled by steam their utility becomes at once apparent. An armored fortress moved by a power from within, and containing a picked body of sharpshooters, could work havoc on an enemy.

The army wagon has always played an important part in the protection of small bodies of men attacked from ambush on the march. Where there is animal power exposed, however, that propelling force is soon exterminated with a single bullet. The horse is much more easily hit than the man. War statistics, including all the world's battles fought between 1800 and 1865, show that for every 100 cavalry or artillery soldiers killed there were 120 horses. But a traveling fort could not be destroyed nearly so quickly as a warship, for the reason that there no water to rush into the former. A hundred holes can be shot clear through it, and yet it will go on unless the vital machinery be broken.

The adoption of the horseless vehicle, as is contemplated, for the simple army train, may lead to the adoption of these armored land vessels some day. At each of its forty-one military posts our army employs two or more wagons. There are two styles of army wagons prescribed by the Quartermaster-General. The larger, the six-mile wagon, is for transporting army supplies to and from railroad stations on the frontier posts. The other, known as the escort wagon, is pulled by two or four mules. It is used in the more thickly settled regions for the same purpose, as well as for official errands.

These wagons have been used in the army since the war, with but little alteration. Both would be important factors of the army train in the event of war with a foreign Power. They are slow, but sure, as are the Government mules which draw them. But the Government mule will not long be use in these advanced days, when all the armies of the world are striving to solve the problem of rapid transit.

The movement is fast on foot to mount our regular soldiers, as well as militiamen, on bicycles. When these are in use marches of a hundred miles or more will be made in the light of one day. Forced ones of double length will easily be made in twenty-four hours. The bicycle needs but a little oil and is always ready. It is, therefore, apparent to progressive military men that with the advent of the bicycle must come the advent of the horseless carriage in the army provision train.

Another important bearing of the compact road motor upon modern warfare will be the possibility of hauling field cannon without the aid of horses. The field piece is the clumsiest of all instruments of warfare to manage during a retreat. For this reason alone cannon are so often deserted in the field to fall into the hands of the enemy.

When good roads make the horseless conveyance popular we will have to propel our cannon at a rapid rate, on the march, to keep up with the rapid pace of the bicycle cavalry and infantry, and the provision wagons propelled by the storage battery, naphtha, gasoline, petroleum and other motors.

It is said that a New Jersey inventor has prepared plans for an acetyline automobile carriage, soon to be built and run in Washington this winter. This promises to be a very cheap motor, employing the new gas renowned for its low rate of cost.

Developments in the lightness, compactness and power of motors will also probably permit air-ships to be made and utilized in war.

A striking vista of a great military engagement a century hence now begins to appear to the mind's eye. Imagine that a great foreign host is falling in upon us. Myriads of floating fortresses are guarding our shores from far out to sea. Our seacoasts are scattered with impenetrable fortifications built at every point which might prove tempting and beneficial to an enemy.

Our armor covered cavalry fly about the country upon their two-wheeled war horses of steel, propelled by powerful light motors. Rapid monitors patrol the continent, now netted with glazed highways, and flocks of warrior birds, driven by compact engines, soar above the enemy's fleets or forces, dropping death upon them, as did the fabulous rocs, the giant birds told of in the "Arabian Nights." — New York Herald.