h anything they are likely to meet. The much-discussed
B.E., after a three-year innings, has been replaced for the most part by
a better-defended and more satisfactory artillery bus. The F.E. and de
Haviland pushers have likewise become obsolete. The scouts which we
thought invincible last autumn are badly outclassed by later types.

For the rest, the Flying Corps in France has grown enormously in size
and importance. The amount of work credited to each branch of it has
nearly doubled during the past year--reconnaissance, artillery
observation, photography, bombing, contact patrol, and, above all,
fighting. Air scraps have tended more and more to become battles between
large formations. But most significant is the rapid increase in attacks
by low-flying aeroplanes on ground personnel and materiel, a branch
which is certain to become an important factor in the winning of the
war.

And this whirlwind growth will continue. The world at large, as distinct
from the small world of aeronautics, does not realize that aircraft will
soon become predominant as a means of war, any more than it reckons with
the subsequent era of universal flight, when designers, freed from the
subordination of all factors to war requirements, will give birth to
machines safe as motor-cars or ships, and capable of carrying heavy
freights for long distances cheaply and quickly. Speaking of an average
pilot and a non-expert enthusiast, I do not believe that even our
organisers of victory are yet aware of the tremendous part which
aircraft can be made to take in the necessary humbling of Germany.

Without taking into account the limitless reserve of American aerial
potentiality, it is clear that within a year the Allies will have at
their disposal many thousands of war aeroplanes. A proper apportionment
of such of them as can be spared for offensive purposes could secure
illimitable results. If for no other cause it would shorten the war by
its effect on civilian nerves. We remember the hysterical outburst of
rage occasioned by the losses consequent upon a daylight raid on London
of some fifteen machines, though the public had become inured to the
million military casualties since 1914. What, then, would be the effect
on German war-weariness if giant raids on fortified towns by a hundred
or so allied machines were of weekly occurrence? And what would be the
effect on our own public if giant raids on British towns were of weekly
occurrence? Let us make