to say that had the Confederacy
possessed boats of the U-53 type the story of our Civil War might
have had a different ending. The device which the Allies have
adopted to-day of blockading a port or ports by posting their ships
several hundred miles away would have found no toleration among
neutrals none too friendly to the United States, and vastly stronger
in proportion to the power of this nation than all the neutrals
to-day are to the strength of the Allies.

[Illustration: _Victory in the Clouds._

_Painting by John E. Whiting._]

From the beginning of the Great War in Europe the fleets of the
Teutonic alliance were locked up in port by the superior floating
forces of the Entente. Such sporadic dashes into the arena of
conflict as the one made by the German High Fleet, bringing on the
Battle of Jutland, had but little bearing on the progress of the
war. But the steady, persistent malignant activity of the German
submarines had everything to do with it. They mitigated the
rigidity of the British blockade by keeping the blockaders far from
the ports they sought to seal. They preyed on the British fleets by
sinking dreadnoughts, battleships, and cruisers in nearly all of the
belligerent seas. If the British navy justified its costly power by
keeping the German fleet practically imprisoned in its fortified
harbours, the German submarines no less won credit and glory by
keeping even that overwhelming naval force restricted in its
movements, ever on guard, ever in a certain sense on the defensive.
And meanwhile these underwater craft so preyed upon British
foodships that in the days of the greatest submarine activity
England was reduced to husbanding her stores of food with almost as
great thrift and by precisely the same methods as did Germany
suffering from the British blockade.

Aircraft and submarines! Twin terrors of the world's greatest war!
The development, though by no means the final development, of dreams
that men of many nations have dreamed throughout the centuries! They
are two of the outstanding features of the war; two of its legacies
to mankind. How much the legacy may be worth in peaceful times is
yet to be determined. The airplane and the dirigible at any rate
seem already to promise useful service to peaceful man. Already the
flier is almost as common a spectacle in certain sections of our
country as the automobile was fifteen years ago. The submarine, for
economic reasons, promises less for the