Nikola Tesla Books
CHAPTER THIRTEEN to do, and of making experiences or, otherwise stated, of recording impressions which will definitely affect its subsequent actions. In fact I have already conceived such a plan. A few years later his philosophy of war was to become even blacker: I believed at one time that war could be stopped by making it more destructive, but I found that I was mistaken. We cannot abolish war by outlawing it. We cannot end it by disarming the strong. War can be stopped, not by making the strong weak but by making every nation, weak or strong, able to defend itself, and as you know I was fortunate enough to evolve a new idea and to perfect means which can be used chiefly for defense. If it is adopted, it will revolutionize the relations between nations. It will make any country, large or small, impregnable against armies, air, and other means of attack. My invention requires a large plant, but once it is established it will be possible to destroy anything - men or machines - approaching within a radius of 200 miles. If no country can be attacked successfully, there can be no purpose in war. My discovery ends the menace of airplanes or submarines, but it insures the supremacy of the battleship, because they can be provided with some of the equipment. I state explicifly that my idea does not contemplate the use of any so-called 'death rays'. I may not live to see my idea accepted, but a century from now every nation will render itself immune from attack by my device. Many thousands of horsepower can be transmitted with my apparatus by a stream thinner than a hair, so that nothing can resist. This last passage sent a shiver down my spine. Could this brilliant man have been so naive about the horror of war as to have spoken so glibly about robot killers and an ultimate death ray? There is a blackness behind the hysterical optimism that war will end with the building of his weapons of destruction. Nikola Tesla has become transformed into the stereotype mad scientist of the movies. Professor KB Vargan in Leslie Charteris's 1920s thriller The Last Hero (later retitled The Saint Closes the Case) is the 116
