At this writing, December, 1917, it is not recorded that any battleship, munition factory, any headquarters, great government building, or fortress has been destroyed or seriously injured by the activities of aircraft of either type. This lack of precise information may be due to the censor rather than to any lack of great deeds on the part of airmen. We do know of successful attacks on submarines, though the military authorities are chary about giving out the facts. But as scouts, messengers, and guides for hidden batteries attacking unseen targets, aviators have compelled the rewriting of the rules of military strategy. About this time, however, it became apparent that the belligerents intended to develop the battleplanes. Particularly was this true of the Allies. The great measure of success won by the German submarines and the apparent impossibility of coping adequately with those weapons of death once they had reached the open sea, led the British and the Americans to consider the possibility of destroying them in their bases and destroying the bases as well. But Kiel and Wilhelmshaven were too heavily defended to make an attack by sea seem at all practicable. The lesser ports of Zeebrugge and Ostend had been successfully raided from the air and made practically useless as submarine bases. Discussion therefore was strong of making like raids with heavier machines carrying heavier guns and dropping more destructive bombs upon the two chief lurking places of the submarines. While no conclusion had been reached as to this strategy at the time of the publication of this book, both nations were busy building larger aircraft probably for use in such an attack.
* * * * *
The submarine has exerted upon the progress of the war an influence even more dominant than that of aircraft. It has been a positive force both offensive and defensive. It has been Germany's only potent weapon for bringing home to the British the privations and want which war entails upon a civilian population, and at the same time guarding the German people from the fullest result of the British blockade. It is no overstatement to declare that but for the German submarines the war would have ended in the victory of the Allies in 1916.
We may hark back to our own Civil War for an illustration of the crushing power of a superior navy not qualified by any serviceable weapon in the hands of the weaker power.
Historians have very generally failed to ascribe to the Federal blockade of Confederate ports its proportionate influence on the outcome of that war. The Confederates had no navy. Their few naval vessels were mere commerce destroyers, fleeing the ships of the United States navy and preying upon unarmed merchantmen. With what was rapidly developed into the most powerful navy the world had ever seen, the United States Government from the very beginning of the war locked the Confederate States in a wall of iron. None might pass going in or out, except by stealth and at the peril of property and life. Outside the harbour of every seaport in the control of the Confederates the blockading men-of-war lurked awaiting the blockade runners. Their vigilance was often eluded, of course, yet nevertheless the number of cargoes that slipped through was painfully inadequate to meet the needs of the fenced-in States. Clothing, medicines, articles of necessary household use were denied to civilians. Cannon, rifles, saltpetre, and other munitions of war were withheld from the Confederate armies. While the ports of the North were bustling with foreign trade, grass grew on the cobble-stoned streets along the waterfronts of Charleston and Savannah. Slow starvation aided the constant pounding of the Northern armies in reducing the South to subjection.
Had the Confederacy possessed but a few submarines of modern type this situation could not have persisted. Then, as to-day, neutral nations were eager to trade with both belligerents. There were then more neutrals whose interests would have compelled the observance of the laws of blockade, which in the present war are flagrantly violated by all belligerents with impunity. A submarine raid which would have sunk or driven away the blockading fleet at the entrance to a single harbour would have resulted in opening that harbour to the unrestricted uses of neutral ships until the blockade could be re-established and formal notice given to all powers--a formality which in those days, prior to the existence of cables, would have entailed weeks, perhaps months, of delay.
