THE SINGLE FIGHTING MAN

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LX, Issue 17075, 31 August 1917, Page 2

THE SINGLE FIGHTING MAN

The following stirring appeal is printed in large type, and wita an accompanying illustration of a bi-plane in full flight high up over a great city, occupies a full page iv a leading American

paper;—

npHE young man with whom you are x talking to-day—your .son, your brother, yourself—may in sis months be the hooded, ghting ligure in this car The United States is going to win this war WITH THE FLYiNG MACHINE. Our share in the great struggle—the deciding factor—will not be sending men in millions to "dreary, muddy, heartbreaking work in the trenches, but sending them in tens of thousands, pfeihaps hundreds of thousands, to fight in the air—each man a thinking unit, a general controlling himself, gaining his individual victory. The American fighter who is to do the real work will be no mere automaton, obeying without thought the order that sends men to death in droves, but an INDIVIDUAL whose power of will takes him on his errand through the air alone. He will be a death messenCer, carrying destruction high up in the air, across ihe invisible border that divides countries, bringing buck, if lie lives, the individual that, multiplied by millions of efforts, will compel peace.

idea of thi. s picture is to show t.io young American, soon to be an air fighter, the life, excitement, the daring adventures that await him, when education shall have taught .his brain to fight and fly, when the order shall* come, "Go out; come back when you have used nn these bullets and "distributed in the interest of peace this supply of dynamite."

Ordinarily the air fighter, of whom there will be a hundred thousand at work above German sail, will be in his machine ALONE. The other passenger will bo from two hundred to a thousand or more pounds of dynamite to be

dropped in instalments from the dreadful height—the weight of a second man will not be carried needlessly. * * ' '*

It will be a horrible business, and the mind recoils from it, but it is a necessary business, for THE WORLD MUST HAVE PEACE and do what is necessary to get it. This machine of death that no trench can stop, no will control, will bring pea.cc by inspiring absolute universal demand for peace on the ground below. This machine multiplied by a hundred thousand will influence the enemy like the Seven Plagues of Egypt multiplied by a million. There is a limit to human endurance, an end to the will to conquer. That end will be reached when within enemy borders ten million explosions of dynamite drop from the sky day and night every twen-ty-four hours..

How this hooded, shrouded, grim figure controlling the rapid-fire guns in the ail- machine typiiies death and misery !

There crawls in India the "hooded cobra," a snake Whose bite is so deadly that whole villages will move to escape its menace.

More deadly than the bite of the cobra is the bite of dynamite that falls from a v machine eighteen thousand feet in the air, to kill n^i one but a thoul--sand—destroying as well as killing. This kind of war must mean killing women and children as well as men. Yes, unfortunately, but this country has not willed it; this country sought no war. The submarine also kills women' and children, and the first women and children killed were our own, although we were at peace. Germany accepts war as it seizes the newest weapon, and will not complain of tlie air fighting. And complaint would do no good. For we mean to have peace, and a hundred thousand American air fighters will bring it back to us.

Germany decided that only the submarine striking FROM BELOW could force peace upon the English, and regretfully told us th at though we were at peace, we too must suffer, for Germany MUST win,

We know that our air machines STRIKING FROM ABOVE will force peace upon the Germans, force the people under dynamite rain to take control into their own hands and say: "We have enough."

Fortunately air fighting will be less dreadful, more merciful, than the ancient method. The actual number of deaths will be fewer. Peace will be wrung from the enemy by the effect upon every mind, the mental strain that will be estalished when dynamite danger hangs above every head and every roof always.

Thousands will be killed. But violent death for thousands that have not deserved it, hideous as it is, is better than slow starvation for millions of women and children that have not deserved it — better than slow destruction with PERMANENT deterioration of entire peoples.

Europe will have peace, because wo have been dragged in and we are determined upon peace. Our way of fighting will Toe i~e latest, quickest, mosfc effective .way. The most imperfect flying machina can carry its two or three hundred pounds of dynamite, divided into twen-ty-pound packages. They may bring our machines to earth, and they will bring down many of them. But with every machine they,will bring down a dynamite explosion that will be remembered. And for one machine brought down a hundred will return, to tell what they have done and seen, and get mdro dvnaiuite.

Men brought down birds by shooting arrows and then bullets at them from the ground, or by sending falcons to catch them.

We shall control men upon the ground by shooting dynamite at them from the sky, sending a swarm of fliers that will darken the earth as the migrating swallows used to do, -darken it with a deadly shadow to be followed by the sunlight of peace and rest for a weary, blood-Soaked world.

In old days when plague visited Europe and each man looked at his fellow for signs of the "Black Death," all humanity was demoralised, all strength of will gene. They painted upon the walls their gruesome pictures of "The .Dance of Death," and waited. They could make no peace with the disease. How'gladly and quickly they would have made it, had it been possible! Such a. plague, such a Black Death, the flying machine will take to the country that to our regret we must conquer.

A small flying machine will carry and distribute from twenty to a hundred small dynamite explosions, each carrying potentiality of death for many. The great flying machine, the air warship, that will sail high above ground, out of reach of aircraft guns, protected by its hovering escort of swift fighting machines, will seek out the great cities, the harbours, the ammunition factories and drop dynamite in packages of ten thousand, pounds and more. Each of a million rushing missiles from the sky will bring its possibility of death. As in the days of the Plague each man will ask in the morning, "What friend is dead ?."

The great German authorities declared before the war that liorribleness vras to win great future victories. They wero right, and the hcrriblehess is and abroad will produce it and our flyREADY. The dynamite factories here ing menVill.ca.rry it, scatter it broadcast till blessed peace returns MAY IT COME QUICKLY."