Too Long; Didn't Read

While science works ceaselessly to cure the ills that human flesh is heir to, invention as persistently devises weapons for man's destruction. Yesterday it was the discoveries of Pasteur and the Maxim gun; to-day it is the Finsen rays and the Rexer automatic rifle. Though one cannot restrain a sigh on examining a new contrivance, the sole function of which is to deal out death and desolation—sadly wondering why such ingenuity might not have been directed to the perfecting of a machine which would render life more easy and more pleasant; yet from a book which deals with modern mechanisms we may not entirely exclude reference to a class of engines on which man has expended so much thought ever since gunpowder first entered the arena of human strife. We therefore choose as our subject for this chapter a weapon hailing from Denmark, a country which, though small in area, contains many inventors of no mean repute. In a London office, within sight of the monument raised to England's great sailor hero, the writer first made acquaintance with the Rexer gun, which, venomous device that it is, can spit forth death 300 times a minute, though it weighs only about 18 lbs.