Suggesting Return to Armor

From The Arthur Conan Doyle Encyclopedia

Suggesting Return to Armor is an article published in The New-York Times on 5 august 1915.

In this editorial, the author mentioned Arthur Conan Doyle's scheme for front-line shields.


Suggesting Return to Armor

The New-York Times (5 august 1915, p. 10)

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is one of several literary men who have for some time been advising that at least a part of the armor formerly worn by the higher grades of soldiers be given to the fighters of today, and now the military surgeons have been convinced by their hospital experiences that even from modern weapons an amount of protection well worth getting could be obtained from helmets and breastplates.

Nobody contends that any armor a man could carry would save him from death if hit squarely over a vital spot by any of the projectiles now in use while going at anything like full speed. The only claim is that metallic coverings, though not very thick. would prevent many of the slighter wounds inflicted by spent balls and small fragments of shells — wounds that are numerous in all the armies, often disabling, and, in war conditions, not infrequently fatal in their effects, in spite of the fact that if proper treatment could be promptly given they would be considered So nearly immediate and complete was the abandonment of armor after gun-powder came into general military use that there must have been reasons for it that seemed conclusive to men who knew much more about the protection thus to be secured than does anybody now alive. Presumably the knights wore their accustomed and honored "harness" until the sternest sort of experience convinced them that they were better off without it. They were not a very ingenious lot, however, those knights, and it is at least possible — indeed, it seems probable — that something can still be done with a modified revival of their one important contribution to the utensils of war.

Modern soldiers do comparatively little marching, and the weight of armor would not be of much consequence or inconvenience in the trench fighting which has come to be the chief part of every campaign. To be saved from slight wounds — and their subsequent infection — would certainly be desirable. and It may easily be that the army that first puts on armor will have a decided advantage over its slower-thinking antagonists. If one does it the others will follow the example, and the time may come when an unarmored soldier will be as nearly unknown as a wooden warship.