S AND ODDS.

As a highly irresponsible prophet I am convinced that towards the end of
the war hostilities in the air will become as decisive as hostilities on
land or sea. An obvious corollary is that the how and when of peace's
coming must be greatly influenced by the respective progress, during the
next two years, of the belligerents' flying services.

This view is far less fantastic than the whirlwind development of
war-flying witnessed by all of us since 1914. Indeed, to anybody with a
little imagination and some knowledge of what is in preparation among
the designers and inventors of various countries, that statement would
seem more self-evident than extreme. Even the average spectator of
aeronautical advance in the past three years must see that if anything
like the same rate of growth be maintained, by the end of 1918 aircraft
numbered in tens of thousands and with extraordinary capacities for
speed, climb, and attack will make life a burden to ground troops,
compromise lines of communication, cause repeated havoc to factories and
strongholds, and promote loss of balance among whatever civilian
populations come within range of their activity.

To emphasise the startling nature of aeronautical expansion--past,
present, and future--let us trace briefly the progress of the British
Flying Corps from pre-war conditions to their present state of high
efficiency. When the Haldane-Asquith brotherhood were caught napping,
the Flying Corps possessed a seventy odd (very odd) aeroplanes, engined
by the unreliable Gnome and the low-powered Renault. Fortunately it also
possessed some very able officers, and these succeeded at the outset in
making good use of doubtful material. One result of the necessary
reconstruction was that a large section of the original corps seceded to
the Navy and the remainder came under direct control of the Army. The
Royal Naval Air Service began to specialise in bomb raids, while the
Royal Flying Corps (Military Wing) sent whatever machines it could lay
hands on to join the old contemptibles in France. Both services
proceeded to increase in size and importance at break-neck speed.

The rapid expansion of the R.N.A.S. allowed for a heavy surplus of men
and machines beyond the supply necessary for the purely naval branch of
the service. From this force a number of squadrons went to the
Dardanelles, Africa, the Tigris, and other subsidiary theatres of war;
and an important base was established at