l monoplane, carrying two passengers at most,
and of low speed--not more than twenty miles an hour at most. In
this age of speed mania the idea of deliberately planning a
conveyance or vehicle that shall not exceed a low limit seems out of
accord with public desire. But the low speed airplane has the
advantage of needing no extended field in which to alight. It
reaches the ground with but little momentum to be taken up and can
be brought up standing on the roof of a house or the deck of a ship.
Small machines of this sort are likely to serve as the runabouts of
the air, to succeed the trim little automobile roadsters as pleasure
craft.

[Illustration: (C) International Film Service.

_A French Monoplane._]

The beginning of the fourth year of the war brought a notable change
in aerial tactics. For three years everything had been sacrificed to
speed. Such aerial duels as have been described were encouraged by
the fact that aircraft were reduced to the proportions needful for
carrying one man and a machine gun. The gallant flyers went up in
the air and killed each other. That was about all there was to it.
While as scouts, range finders, guides for the artillery, they
exerted some influence on the course of the war, as a fighting arm
in its earlier years, they were without efficiency. The bombing
forays were harassing but little more, because the craft engaged
were of too small capacity to carry enough bombs to work really
serious damage, while the ever increasing range of the "Archies"
compels the airmen to deliver their fire from so great a height as
to make accurate aim impossible.

[Illustration: Photo Press Illustrating Service.

_A German Scout Brought to Earth in France._]

But Kiel, Wilhelmshaven and Zeebrugge are likely to change all this.
The constant contemplation of those nests for the sanctuary of
pestiferous submarines, effectively guarded against attack by either
land or water, has stirred up the determination of the Allies to
seek their destruction from above. Heavy bombing planes are being
built in all the Allied workshops for this purpose, and furthermore
to give effect to the British determination to take vengeance upon
Germany, for her raids upon London. It is reported that the United
States, by agreement with its Allies, is to specialize in building
the light, swift scout planes, but in other shops the heavy
triplane, the dreadnought of the air is expected to be the feature
of 1918. With it w