es on
the exact position of the advancing infantry, came later, and
supplemented the use of the telephone, which was liable to be destroyed
by shell-fire. Our contact patrols saved us from a world of those most
distressing of casualties, the losses inflicted on troops by their own
guns.

Serious battle in the air, which was engaged on no large scale until
the second year of the war, was, in its essence, an attempt to put out
the eyes of the other side. In the early days officers often took a
revolver, a carbine, or a rifle, into the air with them, but machines
designed expressly for fighting, and armed with Lewis or Vickers guns,
did not appear in force until it became necessary to counter the attacks
made by the Fokker on our observation machines. Then began that long
series of dramatic combats, splendid in many of its episodes, which
fascinated the attention of the public, and almost excluded from notice
the humbler, but not less essential, and not less dangerous, duties of
those whose main business it was to observe.

Lastly, the offensive powers of aircraft have been so rapidly developed,
especially during the latest period of the war, that it was only the
coming of the armistice that saved mankind from a hurricane of
slaughter. In 1914 a few small bombs were carried by officers into the
air, and were gingerly dropped over the side of the machine. Accuracy of
aim was impossible. In the large modern bombing machine the heavier
bombs weigh almost three-quarters of a ton; they are mechanically
released from the rack on which they are hung, and when the machine is
flying level, at a known pace and height, good practice can be made, by
the aid of an adjustable instrument, on any target. Even more desolating
in its effect is the work done by low-flying aeroplanes, armed with
machine-guns, against enemy troops on the march. Raids on the enemy
communications, for the destruction of supplies and the cutting off of
reinforcements, played a great part in the later phases of the war; and
long-distance raids over enemy centres served to bring the civil
population into sympathy with the sufferings of the army.

All these activities belong to war on the land, and the aeroplanes of
the Royal Naval Air Service bore a part in them. Members of the naval
squadrons at Antwerp carried out the earliest bombing raids into
Germany. The kite balloons, which rose like a palisade behind our lines
and kept the enemy under observation, were,