ds on the part of airmen. We do know of successful attacks
on submarines, though the military authorities are chary about
giving out the facts. But as scouts, messengers, and guides for
hidden batteries attacking unseen targets, aviators have compelled
the rewriting of the rules of military strategy. About this time,
however, it became apparent that the belligerents intended to
develop the battleplanes. Particularly was this true of the Allies.
The great measure of success won by the German submarines and the
apparent impossibility of coping adequately with those weapons of
death once they had reached the open sea, led the British and the
Americans to consider the possibility of destroying them in their
bases and destroying the bases as well. But Kiel and Wilhelmshaven
were too heavily defended to make an attack by sea seem at all
practicable. The lesser ports of Zeebrugge and Ostend had been
successfully raided from the air and made practically useless as
submarine bases. Discussion therefore was strong of making like
raids with heavier machines carrying heavier guns and dropping more
destructive bombs upon the two chief lurking places of the
submarines. While no conclusion had been reached as to this strategy
at the time of the publication of this book, both nations were busy
building larger aircraft probably for use in such an attack.

* * * * *

The submarine has exerted upon the progress of the war an influence
even more dominant than that of aircraft. It has been a positive
force both offensive and defensive. It has been Germany's only
potent weapon for bringing home to the British the privations and
want which war entails upon a civilian population, and at the same
time guarding the German people from the fullest result of the
British blockade. It is no overstatement to declare that but for the
German submarines the war would have ended in the victory of the
Allies in 1916.

We may hark back to our own Civil War for an illustration of the
crushing power of a superior navy not qualified by any serviceable
weapon in the hands of the weaker power.

Historians have very generally failed to ascribe to the Federal
blockade of Confederate ports its proportionate influence on the
outcome of that war. The Confederates had no navy. Their few naval
vessels were mere commerce destroyers, fleeing the ships of the
United States navy and preying upon unarmed merchantmen. With what
was rapi