On-the-Spotnik

By STRIX Homo Sapiens was a hunter before he was a fighter. In both capacities his need for weapons has been constant, and in the latter it has increased. His preference has always been for weapons of precision. He has wanted some- thing • which would enable him to destroy or (more especially in sea-fighting) to disable a par- ticular quarry or adversary. The three main qualities, of a weapon are accuracy, hitting- power and range; and of these the warrior and the hunter have always tended to place the highest value on the first.

The hunter's requirements have now been met in all their essentials. The sporting rifle and the shotgun were for practical purposes perfected before 1914; innovations in their design. since then have been in the nature of refinements, and the only major advance in this field has been the recent development of gear for shooting or harpooning fish under water.

This standstill is basically due to the fact that the hunter's quarry, unlike the warrior's foe, has not been able to improve his defences or to lessen his vulnerability. The rhinoceros is still the old Mark I rhinoceros; unlike the tank, he can be stopped with a weapon designed for this purpose forty or more year's ago. The pheasant, though assiduously encouraged to do so, has not learnt to fly at a height so great as to create a demand for shotguns with a longer range. The hunter's armaments race was a largely unilateral affair, and it ended at the beginning of this century.

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If the hunter has got what he wants, the warrior has not. The scientists who have replaced the flint-knappers, armourers, sword-makers and gunsmiths have provided him, at crippling ex- pense, with a weapon so powerful that he dare not use it; and not only he but the whole world find themselves in an alarming quandary.

Mankind's capacity to be shocked by, and his inability to control, the evolution of new weapons are an old story. Camden recorded that 'When the catapult was first seen at Lacedwmon, Archi- damus cried, "Now mankind has come to an end I" ' At the Lateran Council of 1139 Pope Innocent II banned the use—at any rate against Christians--of the newly-invented cross-bow. Though its range was rather less than the 200-250 yards which the long-bow could attain, it was much more accurate and, unlike the long-bow, its effective handling did not call for immense strength. The use of dumdum bullets (forbidden under, I think, the Hague Convention) by the Abyssinians in a frontier clash was among' the pretexts used by Mussolini for his war of aggres- sion against them, in which bombers were ex- tensively employed.

But these quaint precedents offer no surer or more suggestive guidance in our present impasse than does the fact that chemical warfare, though prepared for by both sides, was used by neither in the Second World War. A deterrent which for practical purposes can never be used is not an effective deterrent; you can no more keep the world in order with hydrogen bombs than you * I do not know enough about the subject to be able to suggest that the liquidation of Stalin would have prevented the Russo-Finnish war in the same year; but it seems a possibility. can keep the Lower Fourth in order with $ red-hot poker.

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A sound tradition decrees that in military ap- preciations the enemy, however numerous, should always be referred to as 'he.' It is a re- minder that the pyramid of responsibilities has its apex in the will of a single individual—a com- mander on the battlefield, a political leader in the phase of growing tension which led up to the battle being fought at all.

Generals replace themselves automatically; if you kill the enemy commander on the eve of battle, you will not prevent the battle being fought, though you may—if he is a very good commander—improve your chances of winning it. But circumstances may arise (as indeed they did at least once* in 1939, and again in 1941) when the elimination of a single man will avert a major war. A weapon capable of doing this without causing mass destruction would be a valuable weapon and an effective deterrent. Brave men though all three doubtless are, if Mr. Khrushchev, Mr. Eisenhower and Mr. Macmillan knew that the Kremlin, the White House and No. 10 Downing Street were liable at any moment to be 'taken out,' I cannot help feeling that the attitude of the first to the other two, and of the other two to the first, might become more accommodating.

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I used the expression 'taken out' because it was, I think, the term employed by No. 2 Group of the RAF, under Sir Basil Embry, to describe their pinpoint attacks on buildings used by the Gestapo in the last war. The methods employed were primitive by the standards of today, but the principle was the same as the one I have adumbrated, particularly since many of the buildings attacked were in towns in Occupied Europe and the localisation of destruction was Therefore a prime consideration.

It may seem fanciful to suggest that what amounts to long-range assassination (or sniping, If you like) is a field whose possibilities our or any other Government might find it profitable to explore. But, although 'Brown Bess,' a flint- lock, remained in service with every European army for nearly two centuries, the warrior's Weapons are no longer capable of standing still; and it is only common sense to suppose that man Will seek to develop the intercontinental missile Into something which will enable him, at need, to. impose his will on his enemies without corn- nutting suicide in the process.

Of the three essential virtues—accuracy, hating-power and range—we know that the

ICBM possesses the last (range) to an unpre- cedented degree. Accuracy is claimed for it, and even if the claim is premature all past precedents, from 'Brown Bess' to the bomb sight, suggest that accuracy is bound to come. Because it was de- signed to deliver nuclear weapons, its use—or its non-suicidal use—is ruled out by its hitting- power, which is thought of as much too great.

But the war-head (which if the user wished could be crammed with custard pies) is nothing to do with the missile qua missile. And before every major Power possesses—as I suppose they all will in a very few years—an adequate supply of these contraptions, many eager and ingenious men will have devoted much thought to finding some short-of-suicide use for them both as a deterrent and as a weapon.

To these men, in all humility and free of charge, I offer the Strix Plan for Intercontinental Warfare. I shall be surprised if something of the sort does not already occupy a part of their capacious minds.