essory of considerable importance even in
the wild country warfare of South Africa. In the warfare that will go on
in the highly-organized European States of the opening century, the
special military balloon used in conjunction with guns, conceivably of
small calibre but of enormous length and range, will play a part of
quite primary importance. These guns will be carried on vast mechanical
carriages, possibly with wheels of such a size as will enable them to
traverse almost all sorts of ground.[40] The aeronauts, provided with
large scale maps of the hostile country, will mark down to the gunners
below the precise point upon which to direct their fire, and over hill
and dale the shell will fly--ten miles it may be--to its billet, camp,
massing night attack, or advancing gun.

Great multitudes of balloons will be the Argus eyes of the entire
military organism, stalked eyes with a telephonic nerve in each stalk,
and at night they will sweep the country with search-lights and come
soaring before the wind with hanging flares. Certainly they will be
steerable. Moreover, when the wind admits, there will be freely-moving
steerable balloons wagging little flags to their friends below. And so
far as the resources of the men on the ground go, the balloons will be
almost invulnerable. The mere perforation of balloons with shot does
them little harm, and the possibility of hitting a balloon that is
drifting about at a practically unascertainable distance and height so
precisely as to blow it to pieces with a timed shell, and to do this in
the little time before it is able to give simple and precise
instructions as to your range and position to the unseen gunners it
directs, is certainly one of the most difficult and trying undertakings
for an artilleryman that one can well imagine. I am inclined to think
that the many considerations against a successful attack on balloons
from the ground, will enormously stimulate enterprise and invention in
the direction of dirigible aerial devices that can fight. Few people, I
fancy, who know the work of Langley, Lilienthal, Pilcher, Maxim, and
Chanute, but will be inclined to believe that long before the year A.D.
2000, and very probably before 1950, a successful aeroplane will have
soared and come home safe and sound. Directly that is accomplished the
new invention will be most assuredly applied to war.

The nature of the things that will ultimately fight in the sky is a
matter for curious sp