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 PREFACE.

The subject of "Aircraft in Warfare," with which Mr. Lanchester deals, is, and for some time will be, highly controversial. In each of its three aspects, the scientific, the military, and the material or manufacturing, it is still in the stage of experiment and speculation. The results obtained cannot always be made available for the information of the general public, and those which are available have usually been set forth in terms so technical, either in a scientific or a military sense, as to be somewhat difficult for the general reader to understand. Very little trustworthy information, therefore, has been disseminated, and the uninstructed public, hungry for information on a novel and alluring subject, of which the national importance is evident, has fallen an easy prey to the imposter. Any plausible rogue, gifted with sufficient assurance, and aided by a ready pen or supple tongue, has been able to pose as an "aeronautical expert," and to find some kind of following. To those who, as a matter of duty, or in search of information, have perused the aeronautical discussions carried on in the Press, or the reports of such discussions elsewhere, the very word "expert" calls up a strange procession of inventors, politicians, motor-trade touts, journalists, trick-fliers, novelists and financial agents, most of them, axe in hand, on the way to the