The sun., 1918-12-22
By AGNES c. LAUT.


By AGNES C. LAUT.
BOUT four years before the war
"A broke cut very great Eng
\ fish authority on military
s,rategy-the sort Of strategy dealing
with what the lay mind calls the
mathematics OF gun fire and troop
movements and that kind Of thing
electrified and shocked the conserya-
two British mind by predicting that
the airplane would so completely
modify the old style warfare as al
most TO abolish II.
II would render cavalry what he
called imperative" 1t would drive
infantry scurrying like frightened rats
for cover to holes dug in the ground.
1t would play hob with the heaviest
longest range artillery science could
devise. Now II you throw cavalry,
infantry and artillery on the Junk
heap how much Of old time warfare
do you think is going to be left2 Only
the artillery OF the air-the airplane
And the wise ones hooted in derision
Why, they said, the fool was as
dippy as the old boys of prophecy who
predicted winged warriors OF the air
with single and double horns on their
head and wheels on their hoofs and
shouts to spout lead Of fire and de-
struction on all the Kingdoms OF the
earth. and War and Death on their
wings, whose wings would fan the
very seventh heaven to fame and
whose stamp would rend the king
doms Of Persia and Greece and Egypt
like rock pulverized to wind blown
dust.
Oh, the critics of that military STRAIT
egist made very merry, they did. They
were wise. they were. They kept their
feet on solid earth--and, the strategiet
might have retorted, their heads in the
mud They were dealing with facts,
not flights Of fancy. Bullets were
what won battles. not high flying I'M
curbed dreams of impracticable Wis
ionaries.
Mebbe! That was only four years
ago; but II you translate ancient into
modern terms. wings into planes, war
rors into kid aviators, horns on the
brow into propellers, hoofs into land
ing wheels and the term snout into
thc nose of the fuselage, the hail of
Or and destruction into bullets fired
by Lewis and Browning and Vickers
guns, or high explosives and shrapnel
from bombing planes-if you translate
ell those terms into modern terms
youll get an awful jolt as to proph-
ecy having been on the blink for the
last century
You won't need to stretch facts till
sou rupture them in trying to prove
that the wings OF War and Death have
famed the seventh heaven and
stamped the kingdoms OF the old
world into wind blown dust. In fact,
gentleman resembling Mephisto and
ramcd William Is chewing that dust
like the cud of Watts Minotaur. Any
way ii is a pretty even bet that those
critics who howled at the strategist
only four years ago have since brushed
the dust of their Bibles and the beams
off their spectacles and reread for the
first time in many year the sayings
OF some long ago observers named
Daniel and st. John.
Anyway the strategist hasn't taken
time 20 answer Il told you so'' When
the war broke out We called the air
plane "thc eyes of the army" 1t
sounded terse and within the, possible;
but who OF US guessed that the planes
might become not only the eyes but
the legs and body OF the army and
especially its hardest hitter of death
blows?
The most We expected of the air
plane was that 1t might serve as a
sort Of bird scout DerhapS too as q
light quick message carrier such as
one plane was for Pershing on the
Mexican border, when what we would
row call an antique did in q few
hours what horsemen and trains could
not do in as many days. And from
being eyes TO the army. the plane be-
came fighter, the cavalry of the
clouds; and from being fighter a sort
OF heavy artillery of the air. bombing
the great ground guns and munition