and prompt building of large fleets of comparatively small ships. If
this can be accomplished in time, the German submarines undoubtedly
will find it impossible to destroy a tonnage sufficient to exert any
great influence on the final outcome of the war.

CHAPTER XVII

THE FUTURE OF THE SUBMARINE

The world will not always be at war. Interminable as the conflict by
which it is now racked seems, and endless as appear the resources of
the nations participating in it, the time must come when victory or
sheer exhaustion shall compel peace. People talk of that peace being
permanent. That is perhaps too sanguine a dream while human nature
remains what it is, and nations can still be as covetous, ambitious,
and heedless of others' rights as are individuals. But beyond doubt
a prolonged period of peace awaits the world. What then is to be the
future of the aircraft and the submarine which had to wait for war
to secure any recognition from mankind of their prodigious
possibilities?

Of the future of the aircraft there can be no doubt. Its uses in
peace will be innumerable. Poor old Count Zeppelin, who thought of
his invention only as a weapon of war, nevertheless showed how it
might be successfully adapted to the needs of peace merely as a
byproduct. As for the airplane both for sport and business its
opportunities are endless. Easy and inexpensive to build, simple to
operate with but little training on the part of the aviator, it will
be made the common carrier of all nations. Already the United States
is maintaining an aerial mail service in Alaska. Already too, bi-
and triplanes are built capable of carrying twenty-five to thirty
men besides guns and ammunition. It is easy to foresee the use that
can be made of machines of this character in times of peace. Needing
no tracks or right of way, requiring no expensive signalling or
operative system, asking only that at each end of the route there
shall be a huge level field for rising and for landing, these
machines will in time take to themselves the passenger business of
the world.

But the future of the submarine is more dubious. Always it will be a
potent weapon of war. It may indeed force the relegation of
dreadnoughts to the scrap heap. But of its peaceful services there
is more doubt. That it can be made a cargo carrier is unquestionably
true. But to what good? There is no intelligent reason for carrying
cargoes slowly under water which might just as well be