revolver, and in the proper length of their
spectacular plumes, to give a second thought to this new, untried, and
therefore worthless weapon. The world's Infantry, resting upon the
assumption that it is the backbone of all armies, and the only real,
reliable fighting body under all conditions, left the consideration of
these vague dreams of mechanical destructiveness to lunatics, cranks,
and philanthropists.
In our own country the Ordnance Department, which is the trial court
before which all military inventions must appear, scouted the idea of
usefulness of machine guns even after war was declared, and adhered to
the view that machine guns, in the very nature of things, could never
be useful except in the defense of fortified positions; that they
never could be brought up on the battlefield, nor used if they were
brought up. This view was that of a prominent young officer of that
department who wrote a report on the subject, and it seemed to express
the views of the department.
This view must have been that of our War Department, for it did not
even acknowledge the receipt of drawings and specifications for a
machine gun carriage, offered freely to the Government as a gift by
the inventor six months before the war, together with the first
correct tactical outline of the proper use of machine guns ever filed
in any War Office in the world.
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