e strength of every such work must depend
on the spirit of its garrison, and at Liege and Namur, the Belgian
defenders gave a good account of themselves. These forts are provided
with an elaborate system for repelling attempts to carry the works by
assault and for making a counter-attack. There are land-mines, fired
electrically from the forts, wire entanglements, disappearing guns, and
search-lights to locate and blind an attacking enemy.]

[Illustration: Construction of Modern Torpedo, Showing All Important
Parts, Including Engine, Propellers, Steering Gear, etc.] sufficient
to sink the modern armor-clad battleship unless it struck under
exceptionally favorable circumstances. A large percentage of the
destructive power was expended on the outside of the hull. Commander
Davis of the United States navy invented the torpedo that carries its
power undiminished into the interior of the vessel.

CAN CUT TORPEDO NETS

The new torpedoes are provided with special steel cutters by which they
cut through the strongest steel torpedo net. The torpedo has within it
an eight-inch gun, capable of exploding a shell with a muzzle velocity
of about 1,000 feet a second. The projectile carries a bursting charge
of a high explosive, and this charge is detonated by a delayed-action
fuse. When the torpedo strikes its target, the gun is fired and the
shell strikes the outside plating of the ship. Then the fuse in the
shell's base explodes the charge in the shell, immediately after the
impact.

With a small fleet of these under-water fighting vessels--say of two
or three--an invading or blockading fleet of not more than twenty
men-of-war can be destroyed within an hour by an otherwise unprotected
harbor or port.

Germany has a few of these latest style submarines, and if it can rush
the construction of the thirty-one now being built, it will have a
flotilla that will protect its harbor towns against invasion.

France, also with its fifty submarines and thirty-one under
construction, and its great corps of scouting aeroplanes, will prove a
formidable agent in crippling the activities of Germany's big fleet of
dreadnoughts, armored cruisers and battleships. Russia will need its
twenty-five submarines for coast defense and probably will not send them
out of the Baltic [or out of the Black Sea in the event that Italy is
drawn into the conflict.]

Undoubtedly, then, the great battles in the present war, on the water
at least, may be decide