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Q1972-81

THE INFLUENCE OF AIRPLANES ON OPERATIONS IN WAR.

It has long since become the fashion to refer to the marked development of any new implement of warfare as revolutionary in its effect. The American mind, more than any other, is hospitable to this idea. We live in an age of mechanical marvels. The dream of yesterday has become the reality of today, in the world of material things. It is not to be wondered at that the untutored imagination, seeing these things, should seize on the hope that some wizard of the laboratory may yet produce an invention that will end war forever. The average man has neither time nor inclination to reflect on the teachings of history and its one great lesson of the immutability of human nature. He has just seen an era of undreamed prosperity. An over-abundance of worldly wealth, the product of the rapid development of a new country, has blinded him to the biological fact of struggle, a fact that never ceases to be a living reality with the dense population of western Europe. Ringed by protecting seas, he has had little contact with war, and has considered this form of mass struggle with another people as too remote a possibility to warrant giving it a great deal of his attention. In consequence, he knows little of the nature of war, and is easily led by ignorance to credit delusions. 

The advent of the airplane formed no exception to this rule. Writers of popularity, beginning modestly with "serial navies grappling in the central blue", soon passed to the complete destruction of hostile cities by a few daring aviators. Wars of the future were to be decided by

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[[right margin]]Influence on Operation[[/right margin]]