Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. SATURDAY, OCTOBER 29, 1910. THE AIR-SCOUT SERVICE.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 10131, 29 October 1910, Page 4

Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. SATURDAY, OCTOBER 29, 1910. THE AIR-SCOUT SERVICE.

The most interesting incident in aeronautics that has occurred for some time, says the London Timas, is the failure of the air-scout service in the German manoeuvres. It has a refreshingly comic side. Parseval 11., which was scouting for the Red Army, was forced by a rainstorm to- descend in the enemy's territory and was captured. It was an. ignominious fate, but the Blue airship M 3 did still worse. It performed its scouting with apparent success, but unfortunately the intelligence which it brought was all wrong and the consequences wer v e rather disastrous. Its business was to watch the Red position, which it did from a distance of 3000 ft or 4000 ft; but the weather was cloudy and the crew were completely taken in by some skillfully constructed sham fieldworks. They reported these as the enemy's main position, halted all night before the dummy, preparing to attack in the morning, while the Reds were really entrenching themselves some miles away. Without making too much of these failures, we must recognize that they illustrate rather pointedly the natural limitations of aeronautical i usefulness. Rainstorms and cloudy weather are not rare atmospheric conditions, and, if they are liable to interfere with scouting to this extent, it is clear that some discount must be taken off the value with which these military appliances have been credited. If there is one practical utility which even sceptics have allowed to the new art of aeronautics, it is its value for military, and especially for scouting, purposes ; and active imaginations have projected marvellous results from the use of airships and aeroplanes in warfare. Perhaps those will come, and it is our clear duty to be ready for them, but at present the vision of aerial navies grappling in the central blue is still far from realization. Nor is the more prosaic, but also magnificent, forecast,of polite society riding the whirlwind and directing the storm on the way to dinner very much nearer. The conquest of the air has not, in truth, been proceeding quite as rapidly as enthusiasts ex-

pected a year or two ago. The progress was then so groat and the achievements so startling that to sanguine minds it seemed that all was over except the shouting. It was a little premature; an is not over by any means in the solution of this most fascinating of problems.