828 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXVIII. No. 728 



upon a little lead over an enemy in war 

 inventions. 



Some terrible things have been predicted 

 for the flying machine as a war engine. 

 Many a sanguine inventor has claimed that 

 with the advent of his flying machine, bat- 

 tleships, coast fortiflcations and cities could 

 be utterly destroyed by dropping dynamite 

 from the air. It is comforting to know 

 that no very great loss of life or property 

 would result from dynamite dropped from 

 flying machines, for the reason that dyna- 

 mite requires confinement to work very wide 

 destruction. 



Dynamite must penetrate and explode 

 inside battleships, earthworks and buildings 

 in order to do very great damage. Half a 

 ton of dynamite dropped upon the deck of 

 a battleship might kill a few men, wreck 

 some of the superstructure and dent the 

 deck a bit, but the destruction would not 

 be widespread and the crew below would be 

 uninjured. Dropped on coast fortifications 

 the damage would be negligible. 



Half-ton bombs dropped into the streets 

 of a large city, or on top of the great build- 

 ings, would shake a few foundations, break 

 a lot of glass and kill a few people. The 

 blast of the dynamite, not being confined, 

 would rebound up into the air in the form 

 of an inverted cone, and the effect in a 

 horizontal plane would be small. 



The flying machine will have very great 

 use in war as a scouting craft for the pur- 

 pose of locating an enemy and inspecting 

 his position; but the enemy will have his 

 aerial pickets out too, and there will be 

 many a tilt in the air between the warring 

 craft. Then it will be that speed will count 

 for much and there will be intense rivalry 

 between the nations in the production of 

 flying machines that will fly fast and fly 

 high, for those able to fly the highest will 

 have a tremendous advantage over their 



enemies. It will be the high flyers who 

 will win. 



I have noticed that great personal 

 bravery is often a concomitant of great 

 intellectuality, and it is proverbial that 

 inventors are the dare-devilest men in the 

 world; and when the flying machine in- 

 ventor casts the earth loose and rounds the 

 ecliptic with the Pleiades, leaves the earth 

 road and cup races with Jupiter on the 

 cloud way, or goes toboganning down the 

 sky slide, then the old soldier's oft-spun 

 yam of how his company mixed their 

 bones with grape and canister, becomes 

 commonplace. 



It will be great sport by and by to out- 

 race and override the thunder storm, and 

 there in the bright sunlight look down upon 

 the rolling, seething mass of cloud spitting 

 flre like an angry cat. "We shall then seem 

 to have nature at a disadvantage. 



In the not distant future, we shall have 

 our automobiles of the air, and in the wars 

 of the future, we shall have our aerial bat- 

 telships, our cruisers, our torpedo-boats and 

 torpedo-boat destroyers. But they'll be 

 airy, frail and fairy craft indeed compared 

 with the grim steel monsters of the sea. 



Although the value of the flying machine 

 in future wars will be mainly as a scouting 

 craft, still its value and importance for that 

 service alone is hard to over-estimate, for 

 the flying machine vedettes will be at once 

 the eyes and ears of the armies of the 

 future; and they vdll have their use in 

 naval warfare too, for there will be the 

 aerial torpedo scout on the lookout for tor- 

 pedoes and torpedo-boats, which will signal 

 the approach of danger. 



Possibly, too, we shall have our torpedo 

 hawk, taloned with dynamite, which will 

 swoop down out of the sky in swift pur- 

 suit of the torpedo or torpedo-boat and 

 blow it up before it reaches its destination. 

 But the torpedo craft will have their sky 



