o be "All-Red." Happily this is not a British difficulty only. Will he
next study the air routes from Paris to the rest of the French
possessions? And, finally, will he study the air routes out of Germany
to anywhere? The Germans are as badly off as any people. But we are all
badly off. So far as world air transit goes any country can, if it
chooses, choke any adjacent country. Directly any trade difficulty
breaks out, any country can begin a vexatious campaign against its
neighbour's air traffic. It can oblige it to alight at the frontier, to
follow prescribed routes, to land at specified places on those routes
and undergo examinations that will waste precious hours. But so far as I
can see, no European statesman, German or Allied, have begun to give
their attention to this amazing difficulty. Without a great pooling of
air control, either a world-wide pooling or a pooling at least of the
Atlantic-Mediterranean Allies in one Air League, the splendid peace
possibilities of air transport--and they are indeed splendid--must
remain very largely a forbidden possibility to mankind.

And as a second illustration of the way in which changing conditions are
altering political questions, let the reader take his atlas and consider
the case of that impregnable fastness, that great naval station, that
Key to the Mediterranean, Gibraltar. British boys are brought up on
Gibraltar and the Gibraltar idea. To the British imagination Gibraltar
is almost as sacred a national symbol as the lions in Trafalgar Square.
Now, in his atlas the reader will almost certainly find an inset map of
this valuable possession, coloured bright red. The inset map will have
attached to it a small scale of miles. From that he will be able to
satisfy himself that there is not an inch of the rock anywhere that is
not within five miles or less of Spanish land, and that there is rather
more than a semicircle of hills round the rock within a range of seven
or eight miles. That is much less than the range of a sixteen-inch gun.
In other words, the Spaniards are in a position to knock Gibraltar to
bits whenever they want to do so, or to smash and sink any ships in its
harbour. They can hit it on every side. Consider, moreover, that there
are long sweeps of coast north, south, and west of the Rock, from which
torpedoes could be discharged at any ship that approached. Inquire
further where on the Rock an aeroplane can land. And having ascertained
these things, ask you