ithin the capacious interiors of which
were packed the parts of aeroplanes as were the soldiers of the
Grecian army in their wooden horse at Troy, for assembling and
launching them. But the engines of warfare which men had repeatedly
claimed would make war so terrible as to end war, had failed to
fulfill anticipations. The means of defense and the rules of the
game had kept pace with the means of destruction. The flat tops of
the warships, which served as alighting platforms for friendly
planes, were heavily armored against missiles dropped from
unfriendly ones. The explosion of a bomb on top of a plate of steel
is a rather tame affair, and guns sufficient to penetrate armor
plate could not be carried on air-craft. The big guns of
battleships, which had for a time grown bigger and bigger, had now
gone quite out of use, for the coming of the armored top had been
followed by the toad-stool warship, which had a roof like an
inverted saucer, and was provided with water chambers, the opening
of the traps of which caused a sudden sinking of the vessel until
the eave dipped beneath the water level and left exposed only the
sloping roof from which the heaviest shot would glance like a bullet
from the frozen surface of a pond.

The first two years of war dragged on in the Pacific. American grain
was of course cut off from Japan and the government authorities
ordered the people to plow up their flower gardens and plant food
crops.

The Americans had too much territory to protect to take the
offensive and their Pacific fleet lay close to Manila, where, with
the help of land aviation forces, they hoped to hold the possession
of the islands, which according to the popular American view was
supposed to be the prize for which the Japanese had gone to war.

The test of the actual warfare proved several things upon which
mankind had long been in doubt. One of these was that, with all the
expert mechanism that science and invention had supplied, the
personal equation of the man could not be eliminated. Aviation
increased the human element in warfare. To shoot straight requires
calm nerves, but to fly straight requires also agility and
endurance.

The American aeroplanes were made of steel and aluminum, and when
they hit the water they sank like lead, but the Japanese planes were
made of silk and bamboo, and their engines were built with multiple
compartment air tanks and after a battle the Japanese picked up the
floating engines a