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Show is the verdict of experience. Though auxiliaries auxil-iaries of most amazing effectiveness prepare the way, the reaping of the fruits of victory remains re-mains the job of the infantryman afoot in combat com-bat at close quarters with the weaker or less skillfully led enemy. Much of war's romance went out with the flashing sabers of cavalry charges Chickamauga and San Juan hill. Then came the attempt to revive the lost romance of the air service, duels to the death 5000 feet Up, "aces" and all that. But now the highest commanding officers of the XI. S. army announce that any idea of Iighl-ing Iighl-ing future wars in the air is just so much bunk. Planes, they say, cannot hold objectives, cannot can-not clean out machine guns nests or snipers, cannot can-not fly in bad weather and are harassed too greatly by anti-aircraft guns. They're most valuable for scouting, for bombing bridges and terrorizing the enemy and noncombatants in the countryside. For the lurid writers that is too bad. There goes the last glorification, the final swagger, the end of spectacular individualism. War is just muddy trenches and barbed wire and death in a shell hole after all. War's New Romance Fades , FANCIFUL writers on military progress ' mechanization must be credited with hav- ing produced some intriguing thrills for srm-' srm-' chair consumption, but as facts developed in Ethiopia, Spain and China their stuff has been pretty well thinned out Success on the battlefield battle-field will continue to rest on the skillful employment em-ployment of the combined arms. This, at least. |