attention. The canal is vulnerable to aerial bombs. A neat problem in division is then presented. Our naval power is no longer represented by the figure five. It is represented by two figures of two and a half each. The two fleets are divided by twenty-five hundred miles of unnavigable mainland. It would require from five to six weeks for either fleet to round the Horn. Within the past year a transcontinental airplane flight in the space of twenty-seven hours and a border-toborder flight in eleven hours have been accomplished. General Mitchell has suggested the feasibility of establishing an aerial base in the geographical center of the country. It would be equally available on either coast, or either border, within the space of a few hours. The last few months have seen some increased activity in aviation in the United States Navy, but it is lamentably far behind other Powers. It has regarded aviation largely as "the eyes of the fleet." The British vision, shared by the Japanese, goes far beyond this. It encompasses the airplane as a new and terrible weapon of offense-a carrier of projectiles and a first line of offense. The projectile theory is based on elementary arithmetic. The maximum range of the 16-inch cannon under ideal conditions is 20 miles. The flight of the airplane is slower than that of the shell, but its range is from ten to twenty times as great; 400 miles is a practicable range if the airplane need not return to the fleet. The cannon is aimed on a calculation of ballistics: the mission of its shell is to pierce the armor of the enemy ship, and it must strike the target to be effective, anything other than a direct hit being a total loss. The airplane The airplane bomb, on the other hand, is under manual control until the target is almost reached, and the bomb is effective anywhere within 200 feet of the target, for the incompressible mass of the ocean acts as a battering ram before the explosive force of the bomb. Again, the weight of the naval shell is slightly more than 2000 pounds, of which only from 3 to 5 per cent is explosive. Fifty per cent of the airplane bomb is explosive, and the tendency in bombmaking is to decrease the weight of the casing and increase the weight of the explosive. The Army has perfected a 4000-pound bomb, but it has never been used because the weight capacity of the service type of bomber is one ton. These facts are the basis of the British policy. Its fleet is a mobile aerial base. Hours before opposing fleets can come within mutual cannon range, defeat or victory will have been decided in the air. Just so surely as one side obtains control of the air, just so surely is the enemy at its mercy; destroyers, cruisers, and dreadnaughts alike become helpless inanimate targets. This is the British vision. In the face of these facts, the Navy allots the Bureau of Aeronautics but five per cent of its total appropriation of roughly $300,000,000 annually. The Army allotment is about the same from its total of $250,000,000. Control of the air mocks all forms of defense in other wars. The only effective weapon against aircraft is more aircraft. Once control is established, the destruction of enemy strong points may proceed in a leisurely manner and without interruption. The seat of government from where the war is directed is a first objective. The statesman who votes for war will himself be on the firing line in the next war. This would be the program: to destroy enemy aircraft factories, so that any danger of a new air force would be eliminated, to seek out the enemy fleet and sink it, to send the troopships to the bottom from the air, to carry on with aerial bombs against arsenals and munitions factories, to smash enemy railroad centers, and demolish every supply base. It is a ghastly picture, but a true one. It is no grotesque flight of a disordered mind. It is the prophecy of a mild-mannered, practical soldier-Marshal Foch. The airplane is the logical vehicle to distribute gas should gas warfare be revived. Incendiary bombs weighing but cne pound each could work havoc in a city. The Coast Artillery Arm is to-day as obsolescent as cavalry. One of the major divisions of the British Air Force is assigned to coast defense. The once impregnable fortress of Gibraltar commanding entrance to the Mediterranean is no longer considered impregnable. The heart of the rock is being tunneled fər an indestructible hangar to house the winged projectiles that must replace the immobile cannon. The maneuvers of or Army Air Service last summer were designed to demonstrate the availability of aircraft in coast defense. In eight hours the bombing fleet transferred its base from Hampton Roads, Virginia, to Bangor, Maine. There is evidence that the Navy may dispute this tactical responsibility with the Army and ask to be charged with coast defense. Modern harbor fortifications are as impotent against aerial attack as the blockhouse of Colonial days. The economic aspect of the question was well expressed by Congressman Frank Murphy of Ohio before the Second Air Institute at St. Louis. He declared, "The best way to avoid war is to be prepared . . . in the most modern way, which is by aeronautics, at an expense that will be very moderate indeed as compared with the tremendous cost of other fighting material, which is now almost obsolete." It is a bargain in preparedness. White Phlox BY ALICE BROWN S cold as death on beauty laid, The white Phlox dreamed the hours away. As warm as beauty unafraid, She met the moon's bright questing ray. She breathed in darkness from the night, The sphered moon melted into mist, Enwrapt in silence, there they blent, VOL. CXLVIII.-No. 888.-63 A Portrait BY SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS (Reproduced on the cover of this Magazine) HE fame of Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723-1792) rises directly from his TH character. He was an honest and thoughtful painter, whose enemies could find little worse to say about him than that he had an unpleasant temper. At our distance we see him, through the eyes of several biographers, as an essentially innocent person, childish in a precocious way and a steady believer in his ideals-for he was tireless in his efforts to rival Titian's color. Through an uneventful life, relieved largely by haphazard and hectic dinners with his literary friends, he devoted himself to portraits which to-day epitomize the eighteenth century in England. This portrait of the young daughter of George, Prince of Wales, and Grace Dalrymple Elliott, his mistress, tells clearly of the reasons for Reynolds' success. Many portraits of children and women bring out the same gentle truths, such as parents dote on and admirers appreciate. With children he played like one of them. It was only to the public (and to one titled sitter in particular) that he appeared to be “a pompous little man." To his fellow artists he was the cold and formal President of the Royal Academy who read rather dry "disccurses” at special meetings. Those who knew him well called him, as did Edmund Burke, that "excellent friend." To Sam Johnson, indeed, he was "almost the only man I can call a friend!” Reynolds' popularity came quickly after his return from study in Rome, and it proved to be lasting. His prices rose at frequent intervals, in spite of Walpole's sarcastic comment. He took in pupils. Assistants helped him lay in draperies and backgrounds. Mezzotints and engravings of his canvases had a great vogue. Even the rivalry of Gainsborough, Romney, Cotes, and Benjamin West could not prevent him from being idolized as "the first English painter" and the portraitist to the nation's most famous people. The beauty of an actress, the character of an admiral, the grace of a child princess-whatever type of sitter he had, became imbued with the spirit of the period and yet lost little of the painter's generalized taste. Reynolds' methods indicate his sincerity. He was thorough, even if he used his brushes quickly and was no student of anatomy. He is reported to have destroyed several paintings of the time of Titian, trying to discover the secret of their luminous color. He himself experimented with various preparations which gave an immediate brilliancy to his paint, but destroyed its lasting quality in many cases. Ruskin said that "neither the painter knew how to paint, the patrons to preserve, nor the cleaner to restore." But though the painter may not have known how to paint for posterity, he most certainly knew how to paint for the society of George III's reign. ALAN BURROUGHS |