h in this district ten aeronautical stations. This would be
no match for the British system which has one such station to every
twenty miles of coast. Ours would be farther apart, but as the Sound
could be guarded at its entrance the stations need only be
maintained along the south shore of Long Island and down the Jersey
coast. Each station would be provided with patrol, fighting, and
observation airplanes. It would have the mechanical equipment of
microphones, searchlights, and other devices for detecting the
approach of an enemy now employed successfully abroad. Its
patrolling airplanes would cruise constantly far out to sea, not
less than eighty miles, keeping ever in touch with their station. As
the horizon visible from a soaring airplane is not less than fifty
miles distant from the observer, this would mean that no enemy fleet
could approach within 130 miles of our coast without detection and
report. The Montauk Point station would be charged with guarding the
entrance to Long Island Sound and, the waters of Nantucket shoals
and Block Island Sound where the German submarine U-53 did its
deadly work in 1916. The Sandy Hook station would of course be the
most important of all, guarding New York sea-going commerce and
protecting the ship channel by a constant patrol of aircraft over
it.

The modern airplane has a speed of from eighty to one hundred and
sixty miles an hour--the latter rate being attained only by the
light scouts. Thus it is apparent that if an alarm were raised at
any one of these stations between New London and Barnegat three
hours at most would suffice to bring the fighting equipment of all
the stations to the point threatened. There would be thus
concentrated a fleet of several hundred swift scouts, heavy fighting
machines, the torpedo planes of the type designed by Admiral Fiske,
hydroaeroplanes capable of carrying heavy guns and in brief every
form of aerial fighter. Moreover, by use of the wireless, every ship
of the Navy within a radius of several hundred miles would be
notified of the menace. They could not reach the scene of action so
swiftly as the flying men but the former would be able to hold the
foe in action until the heavier ships should arrive.

The enormous advantage of such a system of guarding our coasts needs
no further explanation. It is not even experimental, for France on
her limited coast has 150 such stations. England, which started the
war with 18, had 114 in 1917 and wa