Page:Aircraft in Warfare (1916).djvu/195

Rh that to-day there is scarcely a machine that "takes the air" in Europe which is not on Service duty. This fact probably the most ardent supporter of the military usage of the flying-machine would have scarcely ventured to predict prior to the outbreak of hostilities. Certainly, if five or six years ago anyone had been bold enough to assert that at the beginning of the year 1915 there would be scarcely a machine flying in Europe on other than military duty, it would have sounded incredible. That the present situation is not representative of the future in this respect we may take for granted. On the other hand, it is becoming clear that we may quite dismiss from our minds any general usage of the air as a commercial highway; the traffic in merchandise which will be air-borne will never become a great percentage of the world's total.

We may anticipate that lines will be established for the rapid conveyance of mails, and to some extent we may look to the development of passenger services in different parts of the world. But for the time being the inconvenient (and, in the case of shipping, contentious) question as to the rights of neutrals in the air can scarcely be said to have been established; commercial usage of the air is virtually non-existent.

The obligations imposed by international law and convention on both belligerents and neutrals are, at the best, of an arbitrary and makeshift character; it is doubtful whether anything is to be gained by attempting to lay down a code or set of rules to control a form of locomotion, in its application to warfare, when so little experience is available. However, the author has had a book placed in his hands (published early in 1914) on "Aircraft in War," in which the whole contents, from cover to cover, relate to nothing but the international aspect of the subject and to rival codes of proposed