ving your
speed, and when you see the spot, you have to touch a button and
off go these things.

_Adjt. Rumsey_: In a raid my brother went on there were
sixty-eight machines that left; the French heavy machines, the
English heavy machines, and then the English sort of
half-fighting machine and half-bombing machine. They call it a
Sopwith, and it is a very good machine. They went over there, and
the first ones over were the Frenchmen, and they dropped bombs on
these Mauser works, and the only thing that the English saw was a
big cloud of smoke and dust, and they could not see the works so
they just dropped into them. Out of that raid the fighting
machines got eight Germans and dropped them, and the Germans got
eight Frenchmen. So, out of sixty-eight they lost eight, but we
also got eight Germans and dropped six tons of this stuff, which
is twenty times as strong as the melinite. We do not know what
the name of the powder is. The fighting machines on that trip
only carried gasolene for two hours, and the other ones carried
it for something like six hours, so we escorted them out for an
hour, came back to our lines, filled up with gasolene, went out
and met them and brought them back over the danger zone.

_Adjt. Prince_: Near the trenches is where the danger zone is,
because there the German fighting machines are located.

_Senator Kirby_: How far was it from your battle front that you
went?

_Adjt. Rumsey_: I think it was about 500 miles, 250 there and 250
back; it was between 200 and 250 miles there.

_Senator Kirby_: Beyond the battle front?

_Adjt. Rumsey_: Yes; or, to be more accurate, I think it was
nearer 200 than 250.

_The Chairman_: What do you think of the function of the airplane
as a determining factor?

_Adjt. Prince_: There is no doubt that if we could send over in
huge waves a great number of these bomb-dropping machines, and
simply lay the country waste--for instance, the big cities like
Strassburg, Freiburg, and others--not only would the damage done
be great, but I guess the popular opinion in Germany, everything
being laid waste, would work very strongly in the minds of the
public toward having peace. I do not think you could destroy an
army, because you could not see them, but you could go to
d