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minute. During these experiments, a weight of 225 pounds was dropped at a single time from a light machine, and, at the present time, aeroplanes exist that are capable of carrying and dropping bombs of five hundred pounds without difficulty. It is safe to predict that the next year or two will develop machines capable of carrying one thousand pounds of high explosives.

While other nations are straining every resource in developing military aeronautics; while secret experiments are being made in dropping bombs and firing at aerial targets; while aeroplanes are being armored and equipped with rapid-fire guns; while the latest dreadnaughts are being designed to carry aeroplanes and have their stacks and other vulnerable parts screened from aerial attack; in short, while millions are being spent in developing what a noted tactician has called the greatest military invention since gunpowder, we, the United States, are doing practically nothing. In this respect, as in several others, we are totally unprepared for war.their stacks and other vulnerable

Without discussing the possibility of destroying our coastal cities—even the capital itself—by aeroplanes from an enemy's fleet, let us consider the vulnerability of the Panama Canal from the air. This discussion assumes that, in the near future, battleships and cruisers will be equipped with aeroplanes, which assumption is

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