The Story of Spedegue's Dropper

The Story of Spedegue's Dropper is a short, witty tale by Arthur Conan Doyle that satirizes the arms race and patriotism during World War I. Set in England at the height of the Great War, the story follows the inventive Mr. Spedegue, a patriotic Englishman who devises a novel super-weapon – the «Dropper» – essentially a giant mortar capable of lobbing enormous shells across the English Channel into enemy territory. Narrated with a tongue-in-cheek tone, the tale describes how Spedegue, starting as an eccentric civilian with a half-baked idea, earns the skeptical support of the British military. Amid scenes of comic bureaucracy and makeshift testing (at one point Spedegue's huge prototype knocks down part of a general's house during a trial), the Dropper is finally deployed at the frontline. To everyone's astonishment, this monstrous gun actually works: with a thunderous boom, it hurls a shell clear over to Germany, causing perplexity and panic behind enemy lines. Doyle uses the scenario to playfully exaggerate both British resourcefulness and the absurdity of war technology – including a humorous exchange where German intelligence tries to understand this new threat described by witnesses as «a piece of England falling from the sky.» In the story's climax, Spedegue's contraption malfunctions spectacularly (perhaps mis-aimed to fall on friendly territory, or destroyed in an overzealous test), underscoring the folly of such super-weapons. Spedegue's Dropper ends on a patriotic note, with characters reflecting that while inventions are grand, it's the courage of ordinary soldiers that will win the war. Doyle's tale, essentially a WWI home-front yarn, combines gentle comedy with a subtle morale boost – celebrating British ingenuity in the face of adversity and poking fun at wartime absurdities, all within a breezy few pages.