planes, were heavily armored against missiles dropped from
unfriendly ones. The explosion of a bomb on top of a plate of steel
is a rather tame affair, and guns sufficient to penetrate armor
plate could not be carried on air-craft. The big guns of
battleships, which had for a time grown bigger and bigger, had now
gone quite out of use, for the coming of the armored top had been
followed by the toad-stool warship, which had a roof like an
inverted saucer, and was provided with water chambers, the opening
of the traps of which caused a sudden sinking of the vessel until
the eave dipped beneath the water level and left exposed only the
sloping roof from which the heaviest shot would glance like a bullet
from the frozen surface of a pond.

The first two years of war dragged on in the Pacific. American grain
was of course cut off from Japan and the government authorities
ordered the people to plow up their flower gardens and plant food
crops.

The Americans had too much territory to protect to take the
offensive and their Pacific fleet lay close to Manila, where, with
the help of land aviation forces, they hoped to hold the possession
of the islands, which according to the popular American view was
supposed to be the prize for which the Japanese had gone to war.

The test of the actual warfare proved several things upon which
mankind had long been in doubt. One of these was that, with all the
expert mechanism that science and invention had supplied, the
personal equation of the man could not be eliminated. Aviation
increased the human element in warfare. To shoot straight requires
calm nerves, but to fly straight requires also agility and