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of different types, though exciting controversy, the echoes of which have by no means died down, proved that planes can fly offshore and seriously damage and sometimes destroy enemy vessels unprotected against attack.

There was nothing in these experiments to prove that war-ships subjected to such an attack cannot approach our coast, or that an army air force is sufficient protection against invasion. The fact that The fact that ships were sunk by airplane bombs does not prove floating war-ships to be obsolete, any more than the fact that several British armored cruisers were sunk by German gun-fire in the first few minutes of the Battle of Jutland means the abolition of that type of ship. It does mean, however, that a fleet can be attacked, and, therefore, must be ready to defend itself at a distance far beyond the effective range of coast-defense guns. To-day this distance is believed to be approximately two hundred miles.

The means which war-ships can use against attack from the air are two: defensive and offensive. The defensive means consist in such consist in such changes in construction as will give greater protection from projectiles arriving from overhead, and accurate anti-aircraft guns to drive the attacking planes to considerable heights, thus making it more difficult for them to hit their targets. As has always, however, been the case with purely defensive means, from the day shields were carried, they alone are not sufficient. The shield carrier was not protected unless he had a sword for offensive purposes. In the same way, the fleet to-day, no matter

what changes in construction to insure greater overhead armor, nor how accurate the fire of the antiaircraft guns, must have its fleet aviation to meet the attack of the enemy air force.

The number of planes which the regular plane carriers of a fleet and which merchant vessels converted into plane carriers can transport is limited. limited. However, the number of planes knocked down and put in the holds of merchant ships is only limited by the number belonging to the invader. Thus, if a base is available where a decent landing field can be had, it is possible for an enemy to prepare an air force at this base and then use it in a combined attack with his fleet aviation on the coast-defense air forces. While this would be facilitated by the possession of a base with a good harbor, the latter is probably not essential. Two years ago our navy experimented with carrying knocked-down planes in a transport to the scene of the maneuvers, then transhipping them to the deck of a carrier, where they were set up and flown ashore.

Thus to prevent invasion we must first provide our fleet with an aviation force sufficiently strong to beat any similar force which can be brought against it, and, secondly, provide our army with an air force sufficient to defeat the maximum air force which could attack us from aircraft carriers and bases within reach of our coasts.

The amount of aviation needed by our army and navy has been definitely settled as the result of boards appointed by the president and the Congressional investigation caused by by Colonel

William Mitchell's

charges. Congress has authorized the carrying out of a five-year building program with the consequent necessary increases in personnel.

Just as the belief that the Washington Arms Conference fixed the ratio of our fleet to that of Britain's and Japan's at 5-5-3 lulled our people into a false sense of security, so has the authorization of a fiveyear aviation program led them to believe that our glaring aviation deficiencies are being corrected.

It is not generally understood that an authorization is of no value unless the money necessary to carry out that which is authorized is provided. Congress evidently intended the administration to ask for such additional funds that the first of the five yearly increments, which constitute the aviation increase program, would have been completed by June 30, 1927. However, no funds were asked for, with the result that the fiscal year of which this date-June 30-is the end, will have passed without any increase having been made.

The budget for the fiscal year, July 1, 1927, to July 1, 1928, does not carry sufficient funds to complete one of the five increments. Thus June 30, 1928, will see the completion of but part of one increment instead of two as planned. What is worse, such funds as are provided are got by taking the amounts away from the budgets of the army and navy, thus compelling these two forces to submit to a considerable reduction in order to give aviation but part of the authorized increase. This is clearly contrary to the intentions of Congress, which plainly

indicated at the time it authorized the five-year program that the funds to carry it out should be in addition to the budgets proper of the army and navy.

In the meanwhile we lack sufficient planes to insure the battle efficiency of our fleet, and to provide that army air force which is essential if we are to prevent an enemy from landing on our coast. Because of lack of replacements our first-line planes are becoming obsolescent and our obsolescent planes obsolete. Economy is carried to such a point that by reason of lack of gasoline our fliers are unable to get the training essential to efficiency, while the continued failure to put our aviation in an efficient state is undermining the morale of the officers and men. General Patrick, the army air service chief, has recently pointed out the increasing number of resignations from the service resulting from this state of affairs.

The combat strength of our navy bears no relation to the 5-5-3 ratio. It is distinctly inferior to that of Britain and hardly as strong as that of Japan. The program which was to provide our fleet with adequate essential aviation, and our army with the air force vital to offshore operations, is not being carried out. carried out. In the midst of a world envious of our prosperity, resentful of our growing foreign trade, our customs and immigration barriers; at a time when the oceans are more than ever a pathway and the air rapidly becoming one, we are allowing extreme economy to rob us of the means to prevent an enemy from landing on our shores.

(General Reilly's next article in the April number)

H

THE WINNER

R. H. MOTTRAM

E BEGAN by beating us-the C mess of divisional headquarters-completely. It was no mean feat. We were perhaps the most hard-bitten, deeply stained set you could find. Higher appointments fell to great skill, great influence, or great impertinence. But the sort of technical specialist who got pulled out of the infantry and attached to divisional headquarters, and messed in C mess, was a survivor of so much, chosen by the gods from among so many of his equals and betters. Why "Uncle" should have been so chosen, and how he arrived among us, we never discovered. But there he sat, one gloomy evening of 1916, with the Somme fiasco grumbling all along the horizon. He volunteered no information. He did not look the sort of man one could catechize. He just sat and smoked, and drank a good deal of whisky, not attempting to ingratiate himself, nor even to be agreeable. He beat us from the start. He went on sitting, smoking and drinking. He won. We adjusted ourselves to him, as he had not to us. He became a feature, then a boast, finally a byword. His outward appearance gave no clue to his personality. It was prosaic in the extreme. Bald, with a dirty gray mustache, of the kind which Tenniel attributed to the Walrus, broadish for his medium height,

astonishingly spare, hard and agile for his years, which appeared to be nearer sixty than fifty; his maple-leaf badges showed the number of one of the battalions of the First Canadian Division and the rank of captain. His name was Dakers. Beyond these vague indications he was a mystery. But he became an institution. We took to calling him Uncle. It does not matter who first thought of it, or why. It suited him exactly. There is something of authority and responsibility connected with the title Father. But Uncle that semidetached relationship in which one. can be kind without condescension, and humorously affectionate above the clash of antipathetic generations! Now, no one would have dreamed of receiving an order from Uncle. He never gave such a thing. On the other hand we all contracted the habit of going to him for advice. This added immensely to his reputation. For whatever reason, good, or probably bad, he had been given the post of clearance officer at divisional headquarters, it was soon discovered that Uncle was a man of parts. When everything failed, as it did, in those increasingly enormous and useless offensives, about once a week, Uncle always had some expedient ready. The further we departed from all the known rules of war, the better he grew. At his own job of

clearance officer he was pretty useless -anyhow he left it all to young Skene, his second in command. But he was on surer ground when called in to help the deputy assistant director of veterinary services with sick mules, or the assistant provost marshal with colonials. And when the worst happened, when we had to retreat ten miles and the whisky ran out, his efforts were remarkable, were crowned with success, and met with the fullest recognition (for by the middle of 1917 whisky was one of the few things one was still certain of wanting in a crumbling world).

Thus from being a mystery he became an institution. His fame spread far beyond our little C mess. Very high personages, who could not ask his advice, obtained his opinion by circuitous means. It was owing to some mumbled remark of his that the Australians were taken right back after the massacres of Passchendaele. It was because he said, "You 'ave been a long while thinking of it," that the new mark-VIII, nongalling ammunition-carriers were served out to all the machine-gun units for their teams.

He was entirely unconscious of the weight he carried. He never smiled when, as was fitting, he was eventually enshrined in an epigram.

It was young Kavanagh, that brilliant Irish schoolmaster, who said it. When rest had fallen upon us, and the last excuse for the irksome discipline and bewildering boredom of soldiering was gone, Uncle still sat in the mess, always smoking a pipe, and perhaps drinking a little

more.

One by one, as we exhausted the few poor alleviations of our lotfor there was not even enough work

to occupy our minds, risk had been eliminated, and the amusements available to us had been worn to the bone-we dropped in, found that there was still an hour before they would bring us our tinned dinner, and sat down beside him. Kavanagh came in last, swallowed his drink at a gulp, coughed, stared, and burst out, "There sits Uncle, looking like a prairie!" None of us knew what a prairie looks like. But if unlimited and perpetual sameness is its characteristic, the simile is apt indeed. He had changed less than any of us in these four years or so. He did not blink on hearing the description, but suggested, in his voice, hoarse, as Kavanagh also had said, from drinking out of damp glasses, that we should play one of those childish gambling games in which he excelled, and which enabled him to pay his spirit-laden mess-bill. In this, as in everything else, he had us beat.

22

This concludes the direct evidence about him. As has been shown elsewhere, the increasing disintegration of the fourth year removed him from our little mess, which broke up shortly after, as if he had been its central rivet. We went off to do our special jobs in special holes and corners; he went with Skene, who discovered that there were real nephews of his in France, justifying his sobriquet. But more than that, not even Skene discovered.

Yet the student of human nature can make a few shrewd deductions. How did the man come to be what he was? He had a reputation as wide as that of most generals and far more creditable. But he was an obscure insignificant old fellow. People

called him ignorant, but Skene said: No, primitive rather. It was not merely that he understood horses. The A. D. Veterinary Services did that. Uncle very nearly was a horse. He looked at things from a horse's point of view. He understood the tongue-tied, pocket-full-of-money insolence of colonial troops. He understood a Massey-Harris reaper and binder. From the way he spoke to French mechanics who mishandled these almost human machines, one might almost say that Uncle looked at things from the Massey-Harris point of view. What sort of man has these thoughts, so rudimentary that they rank next to dumb instinct? Well, one must suppose some one born in and bred up to agriculture, leaving England at the earliest possible age, long before sophistication, and spending forty years without a break in Canada. Now the most primitive, entirely agricultural county in England is Wiltshire. It has no big town, not even a port. Its people have a slowness of speech and breadth of face that rather fitted Uncle's. As he never alluded to his childhood, never went to England on leave, never wrote to any one, one may assume that he left in disgrace and never cared, perhaps never was able to go back. But that he was not Canadian born is pretty certain. He had no accent. His attitude toward the war was too instinctive. He had no

imperialism. Nothing less than August, 1914, could ever have brought such a truant home to the mother he had saddened. If she has a consciousness, that queer mother of us all, that sits between Ireland and the Channel and the North Sea, she must think that he made good.

Most of us never knew of his death until years later. Then one or two came together, with Skene, and he told us. Then it was that one of us thumped the table with his fist crying, "By Gad, he always won!"

We knew what was meant. We had been comparing notes, trying to make out how, after a war so bad, the peace could possibly be so much worse. We had admitted that for the best part of 1917 and 1918 the real enemy had been not the Germans but the War. It beat most of us, but not Uncle. Just as he had always won at cards and drunk up his winnings, so had he swallowed the Armistice, lain down, and died, of flu. Certainly, he was unbeatable.

And amid the toppling of crowns and thrones, and creaking of new nationalisms, there glimmered our admiration for him. Of all the old and shaky and the new and gimcrack forms of civilization that may not outlast a decade, the England of which Uncle was a specimen will survive. Who else could hang on with so little fuss, and pass out so quietly?

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