The following statement, which I drafted and which was issued by the General Staff before the Army Man[oe]uvres of 1912, summarizes the position:-- "As regards strategical reconnaissance," it says, "a General is probably now justified in requiring a well-trained flyer, flying a modern aeroplane, to reconnoitre some 70 miles out and return 70 miles. This would be done at a speed of, say, 60 miles an hour in ordinary weather over ordinary country. Thus within four hours, allowing a wide margin, a report as to the approximate strength, formation and direction of movement of the enemy, if he is within a 70-mile radius, should be in the hands of the Commander." To those imbued with a knowledge of military history this new method of ascertaining the enemy's movements might well seem revolutionary. Let us take two instances illustrating what aircraft, with a radius of little over 100 miles, might have done in previous campaigns. For the operations which terminated in the capitulation of Ulm in 1805 Napoleon concentrated two army corps at Wuerzburg and five along the left bank of the Rhine between Mannheim and Strasburg, his main body of cavalry under Murat being at the latter place. The Austrian Army under Mack was behind the Iller between Ulm and Memmingen, and expected the French to advance through the defiles of the Black Forest, where Napoleon did actually make a feint with his cavalry. Napoleon, however, crossing the Rhine on September 26th, 1805, moved east, and it was not until October 2nd, when the French Army had reached the line Ansbach, Langenburg, Hall and Ludwigsburg, and his envelopment was far advanced, that Mack realized that the main French advance was coming from the north. Aeroplanes of the type we possessed in 1914 could have reconnoitred the whole of Napoleon's preliminary position, could have detected his line of advance, especially as it was concentrated on a very narrow front, and could have brought back the information to the Austrian Headquarters within a few hours.