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88

9

mere tactical questions of airplanes versus battleships, it is most of all to be considered, that in the development of the airplane there is placed for the first time in history, in hands of weak and strong combatants alike, a weapon capable of as effective and unpreventable direction against the kings, congresses, presidents and diplomats who declare war, as it is of direction against the fighting men on the far away battlefronts. The next great war will find no remote section of the belligerent nations immune from the deadly onslaughts of high explosive bombs and poison gas dropped by the enemies' air fleet.
Fancy for a moment the disillusionment to come when in some great conflict of the future a splendid up-to-date battleship fleet of the traditional order, finds itself beset in midseas by couple of great, unarmored, liner-like hulls, engined to admit of speeds such as will permit them to pursue or run away from any armored craft yet built, and designed with clear and level decks for hundreds of demountable airplanes, with fuel, repair facilities, and explosives, and with housing for a regiment or two of expert pilots. Then picture the one sided engagement that will ensue, the thousands of tons and millions of dollars worth of cunningly-fashioned mechanism all but omnipotent against the unremitting harrying attacks from aloft, unable either to escape or give chase to the enemy's floating bases of supplies, which ever warned by their aerial supports, will unreachably maneuver out of gun range, launching their winged messengers of death until the cold waters close over the costly fleet