The Birmingham age-herald., 1918-09-01

highly censorable details But one of
 the new Italian machines fell unin-
 Jured in Venetian suburb: and by
 now the Austrians have acquired all
 the technical information they need
 from it. True. for some reason, they gave it out that it was an American machine. As for the Berliners, al- ready they have seen the hapdwrtt- ing on the sky walls. A Dutch traveller reports that the only question in Ber- lin is how long it will be before their bombing begins, and which of the al lies will come first. Leaving himself out of it for the time, and a great personal desire to go to Berlin, d'An- nunzio gave some very good reasons why it would be the Italians
 One of the odd phases of the news history of the war is how seldom America has heard of Italian achieve ments in the air. We know that the English have taken to the air almost as the Drakes and Raleighs and Gren. villes of Elizabeths time took to the sea. And the French fight in it like the peerless, flashing beaux sabreurs they have always been But the Ital- ians we heard of d'Annun- zio and the Capronis, and that is all And this is probably because, in a country whose technical resources are most limited, it is in the demesne of the technical, which on the surface is always prosaic, that the Italians have made their greatest conquests.
 Long before the war the men of Turin and Milan were showing their old-time dexterity in fine steel work ing in the making of almost unbeata- ble racing automobiles. It seems to have come straight down from the fla nous Milanese armorers. When Italy entered the war, the Capronis andNtheir fellows at once turned that skilled craftsmanship into the manufacture of very fast but above all, very powerful and dependable airplane engines. The Capronis and the other mechanics Of the head" as the Italians call them worked constantly upon the technology of the whole machine And it was as If they had the long flight and the heavy operation in their minds from the beginning. Now, in the last year. the tortoise has reached the goal again. They have begun to make good.
 They first showed what they could do by dropping so tons of bombs on Pola in single raid. They did it with only few machines, too. and all came back uninjured. According to Aus trian airmen, it didn't seem possible to injure them.
 LIKE LONG DISTANCE FLIGHTS
 They began next to train for distance 1iylng. And there they displayed their true Italian capacity for the practical another quality we have taken into lit tie account, though we see it in the sue cess Of almost every Italian who opens d snop. on the next corner. Mail trans portation in Italy had become difficult on land. And by sea German and Aus tran submarines had made it more than difficult. Accordingly, throughout Italy,s whole thousand miles of length an air, mail service was established. That was long before our flyers began to carcy letters, rather irregularly, between New York and Washington And when the Italian airmen flew to Sardinia and Sicily they both carried letters and looked for submarines as we'll. When will We do that between Boston and St. Johns. Newfoundland, and between Key West and Havana? Above all, there were. dozens of young Italians. with whom flights of 600 and 700 miles had simply become a part of their regular routine.
 The next step was to combine the heavy operation and the distance flight. And they did that Cthough We heard little of it at the time) when the French and English were sore beset in the spring by the first great German drives. Squadrons of Capronis flew straight up over France and went to work almost before they knew if there would be hangar space for them at night.
 And the last step was taken when q d'Annunzio flew to Vienna Not in the flight itself, though it is the most inn pressive piece of air work done so far in the war But in this: The Italians proved that they have gone the neces- sary speed in their bombing machines They made whole 621 miles, including the ''stop'' above Vienna at nearly % miles an hour. Protecting planes, ''avons de chasse.' went with them But the bomb carrying planes were no longer great, numbering. "half-time busses" Italy made it clear she had produced something fast enough to fight and bomb as well.
 A COLUMBUS OF THE SKY
 "Go to Berlin, said d'Annunzio; ''of A certainty we will go to Berlin Not