for the Christians were relatively floating fortresses, their tactical radius instead of depending upon the speed with which their rams could crash into the enemy was governed by the range of their heavy artillery and the general impossibility of assailing it.[1]
Now it is conceded by all that progress in weapons does not stand still; hence it is surely quite permissible to imagine that at some future date there may be evolved a weapon of extreme potency, as superior to the gun as the gun was to the catapult, and of which we can no more conceive than could the Athenians dream of the gun. It is also quite permissible to imagine that this weapon might require the space now occupied by motive power just as the gun did in the case of the oar. If so, and if its powers are so great both in destruction and in range (which might well be that of wireless telegraphy), motive power will become a secondary consideration. Thus were there a choice, as in the past, between the weapon and the motive power the latter would go, even if it meant that sails had to be reverted to. Such a return to sails is, of course, extremely unlikely, but it is an inference from the old struggle between the oar and the sail—which was a conflict between the radius of the weapon and
- ↑ In these days when, after a period of the reverse, there is a tendency to regard motive power as all-important and its manipulators as the principal figures on shipboard, it is well to remember that its real importance is of a changing nature, that it is and must ever be an adjunct to and a means of using more effectively the weapons for which alone the ship primarily exists.
