I

T may be, in solemn truth, that this war will have to be won in the air. No longer can infantry advances be

made on large scale without protection of curtains of fire. And curtains of fire must be controlled from the air. It may be following no more than the irresistible and terrible logic of this thought, then, if we accept the report that the Allies have at times been driven out of the air, that American eagles-American aeroplanes-must win the war; that America will have to furnish to her allies not three or four thousand aeroplanes but perhaps tens of thousands.

Let us ponder that fact well.

Let us note that the eyes of an army are in its aeroplanes, and that the day of speculation about the worth of the bird to which America gave birth is past. Aeroplanes have been demonstrated to be more important in war than almost any of the fifty factors that have wrought the tremendous change from three or four possible combinations in war-man with club versus man without club, etc.-to the tremendous number of over twenty-five hundred. We Americans, quite unwittingly, are guilty of ingenuity that has turned warfare from a fight into a science and kept burning all these years, steadily in the ascendency, the damning fever of arms. We have done vastly more than all the rest of the world put together to complicate war and to throw the relatively kind old man-to-man fight into innocuous desuetude. An American devised the ironclad, for instance. An American devised the revolver, and another the submarine, and another the

BY DONALD WILHELM

International Film

A SUBMARINE DONE FOR?

telegraph, and another the telephone, another perfected the device for taking up the recoil on the howitzer and another invented the aeroplane. And the result has been that, in the world of armament, the study of possible combinations between military factors had, before the Great War burst into flames, grown apace in all the great nations

except America-a curious spectacle surely: America, the younger brother, giving the means of destruction to the older nations while sitting back with no thought of a Great Affliction on the

morrow.

And now we are in the midst of the third year of the Great Affliction and there are two offspring of ours that require attention: the submarine and the aeroplane.

The submarine is our menace.
The aeroplane is our hope.

The aeroplane has grown, as it were, very rapidly to maturity. Only seven years ago, in the hangars at the first great aero meet in America, the Wright brothers-quiet men addicted forever to tinkering and adjusting their engines and planes-Glen Curtis, Claude Grahame-White, Ralph Johnstone, and others, used to sit back, smoke and make assertions about the use of aeroplanes in war. These assertions, for the most part, read like the stuff of dreams. But these dreams have come to realization.

"Give me one air scout in preference to a battalion of cavalry," General Pershing said in Mexico. And another officer asserted: "Cavalry now belongs to the auxiliaries-the infantry and the artillery on land and the aeroplane aloft constitute the fighting forces now."

But perhaps some of us need proof of the vital part played in modern war by the aeroplane?

Let us look, then, at a description of that part-description by a brilliant English aviation officer.

Major Rees of the British Aviation

*A Sole farker on we have our janje mamine. It is very im vram test, from time to time, to K20 CATES were of protographs of 2. mery Ines on of a work is done by vozaca. The machines are sent on is grape jostugrapher machines with para

*Bull further vat we have reconnaisum milta vre of these are out tiny ma or more; others are close to our own line

"And then we have special duty machines to crop papers, for use when advances are being made and communications are est off, ete. They work with different parties of troops irfantry or cavalry-on the grounds. If infantry ran out of ammunition they signal up, and the aviator signals back to supplies. If a detachment meets a nest of machine guns, the aviator sends back word about it. This work is done very close to the ground. Much of the work, in fact, must be done close to the ground. Bombing, for instance. We

know that every time we drop a bomb

on a railway track it means eight hours' work for the Germans. We want to do more of this. We can't now-we can't spare the machines, for most of them are engaged in reconnaissance work, which is most necessary. Bomb ing is done by squadrons, and, since one is hardly ever in the air at all without anti-aircraft gunfire breaking near, the casualties are high"-the casualties among the aviators are fourth, it is said officially, in point of percentage, in the English army.

"Often," Major Rees went on, "you see machines coming back with wires streaming out behind them, or some other part just hanging to the rest, or, perhaps the engine has had a cylinder crippled. Nearly every machine is hit somewhere on every trip. If you look at the airdrome behind the lines you will find one-half the machines can fly, the other half are being repaired. If we can repair the machine in two days we do so, otherwise we send it back to the depot.

"All this goes on day by day, Sundays

NE may see from all this the tremendous uses made of our good American eagle the aeroplane! And the Germans are using it! On the European battle fronts there has been almost continuous fighting for the supremacy of the air because each side knows that to win the domination of the air is to ride the Allies down, on one hand, and on the other to rule for the nonce all Germania. France might not exist today if her aviators had been inferior. (The French honor the aviators for that. Every French patriot loves those aviators. In France those who used to do homage used to bow and whisper "My prince!" Now they bow and whisper "My aviator!") Which is only semi-official! But it was asserted officially, by one of the members of the French mission to America that if Joffre had not employed the American Eagle on the Marne "the Huns might have marched into Paris."

Says a celebrated French officer:

"The French had only a hundred machines when the Germans stabbed at Paris. The Germans had built railroads near the Belgian frontier so as to en

able them to bring a large number of

troops in a very short time. The French headquarters knew this. We knew that the Germans were planning to invade Belgium, but we thought that the main attack would come thru Alsace, which-Heaven help us!—we shall have back again! So only three French army corps were sent to Belgium, and Joffre hurried the rest and all reserves eastward.

"It was the French aviators that flew with the word that tremendous masses of troops were pouring thru Belgium. The aviators brought that word in time. They saved France from annihilation.

"And again at the battle of the Somme. At Verdun the aviators had been saved for the Somme. That was right. And then, for three weeks, during that great battle, the Allies, as a result, held domination in the air. The result was that our artillery fire was conducted splendidly.

poured and poured and poured! We can send troops, of course: but long before we can send enough troops to make perceptible changes in a battle line where millions of troops are engaged, we can send aeroplanes, squadrons of them! We can't send them tomorrow, nor the next day our long callousness, our long and persisting refusal intelligently to take a disagreeable situation as it is and to ward off the Great Offender, has its toll now. But we can send them soon.

I went to a member of the Aircraft Board-a man ligh in position-one of those admirable American manufacturers who are saving the nation in this emergency. I asked him flatly how long-how long is the essence of everything now!-it would take his organization to get under way. "We can get under way at once," he said emphatically. "If there is one thing that we Americans stand for it is quantity! For Americans, when the designing and the engineering work is done, output is easy. And this output will be swift and sure. We can get out forty thousand engines, twenty thousand planes before next spring. Give us the money and we can get out that many by next spring and increase the output steadily, but we can't do that if we don't start till months from now. We must start now.””

"Then why don't you?" I demanded. He threw out his hands. "We haven't the money,” he said.

TH

HERE is evidence that the Aircraft Board is ready for its stupendous task in the manner in which it has utilized and coordinated cooperation all along the line and in the manner in which it is providing for aviation training. Three of nine camps appropriated for are rapidly being made in readiness. And already, waiting for them to be finished, in dozens of colleges the most alert men of the land-college athletes preferably are learning the rudiments, in special concentrated courses, of military training, of machine gun handling, astronomy (aviators must know that, for they often have to steer by the stars), of navigation, waiting for those camps to be got ready to receive them, after which camp training they will see further training abroad.

In land warfare aeroplanes are used in a thousand ways. England is providing for fifteen thousand during the coming year-evidence enough of their

In sea warfare they are almost as important, altho used in numbers con

the morning and continue until after sunset. The last patrol stays up to spot the enemy flashes. In the twilight, one can see the flashes much easier.

"We send over our lines every day a thousand machines. The average time is two hours a day. A machine hardly ever continues in service fifty hours. Either it is shot up or has to have new

situation! Let us ascertain whether in this article I have written mere enthusiasm of a kind that in the days of the first aero meets in America stirred imagination more than anything else! Let us note that we can without doubt send over thousands of troops, but will they arrive too late? Will they be poured down a bottomless sluice and

giant seaplane that was scheduled to cross the Atlantic just when the war broke out-demonstrated some of the uses of the seaplane soon after it was set to scout work in British waters. Once it swooped down and crippled the periscope of a submarine. Twice, soon afterward, it saw, from its perch on high, submarines under water.

It

watched, circling about, calling its friends the water craft, till they came up and "finished the job."

Enough has been written to make clear-if any one longer doubts-the military uses of the aeroplane. It is no exaggeration to say that just as a man without a club has little chance with a man who has a club-about as little chance as a man with bow and arrow has against a man with a revolver-so it has become convincingly clear to those in close touch with the military situation abroad that an army without aeroplanes is, in no small degree, at the mercy of an army equipt with them. France has thousands of aeroplanes. England has more. We in America have hardly any. Yet, considering our infinite coast and border line, we should have most of all.

But the point isn't what we should have the point is what we must have to keep the Germans from winning the war!

And three thousand machines are not enough! Not nearly enough.

Week by week, however, especially since the foreign missions came to America, there has been growing in Washington a general conviction that the war can be won with aeroplanes. The Aero Club of America has been for years arguing eloquently for the development of our aerial resources. General Squier and the Signal Corps in Washington have done wonders toward laying out the lines that Howard Coffin, of the Council of National Defense, with the members of the committee of which he is chairman, is ready to utilize in getting together an aerial fleet. The council is given the task of mobilizing the phases of industry necessary to the building of 3000 planes the first year.

It has had the coöperation of the National Advisory Committee for Aercnautics-which has been at work for over two years--and the aid of not a few technical institutions such as Massachusetts Institute of Technology and many of the facilities of Cornell. Altogether, thus, important steps toward standardization of army-navy aeroplanes have been taken. The thirty odd aeroplane manufacturers in America, who have been making machines of nearly as many models, coöperated admirably with the National Advisory Committee at the beginning and are cooperating with the council now. Moreover, the whole aeroplane industry is particularly mobile and plastic because it is new and enthusiastic. It is hard to believe, in fact, how many of the men engaged in it and how many technical men engaged primarily with other functions have given their time and efforts and funds toward working out armynavy aeroplane problems-problems of instruments such as those involved in making altimeters, drift meters, tachometers, other meters; problems of finding a substitute for the surface cloth heretofore imported from Ireland and England; problems of providing a substitute for weather-dried spruce, the ideal wood for aeroplanes-a substitute of high specific density, even a metal, that can be got ready for extensive manufacture in much less time than the year or two years required to season spruce in the open air. All technical problems, practically, have been met and solved. Even engine difficulties have been overcome nearly altogether, and the engine problem is an important one. "The needs of the army and navy," said J. F. Victory, of the Advisory Committee, in May, "are now estimated to be

3000 machines in the first year and 4000 or 5000 in the two succeeding years, on the basis of keeping 1000 ma chines in the air, on which basis we shall need two extra engines for every machine. Engines wear out and need overhauling constantly."

These problems all are complex, but they are now in the background and the question of supplying more than 3000 machines in the first year is coming more and more pertinently into the foreground. "Three thousand machines," said a Government official, "are not enough."

Such assertions have become more and more prevalent and have, of course, had their effect on Chairman Coffin. His point of view is, very briefly, this: "If the Government wants more machines it simply needs to supply the money and say so. We'll get them!"

And America, it is believed, is going to need them! America-so the conviction is everywhere gaining strengthmust, and can, match her eagles against any brood of flying machines that there are. We don't all realize that we have got to provide ourselves with the efficient means for all possible combinations that may arise in this war; we must remember that the aeroplane enters as a common factor into more possible combinations against an enemy than any other war factor. We can produce aeroplanes almost without number; and there is need of them almost without number. It is certain that we shall need many for defense; it is certain that we shall want more and more for offense. They are these American eagles-characteristically American "birds," fit emissaries to prompt the boche that we are on the job. Washington