\ -77against her. She not only lacked means of retaliation with that particular weapon but was without hope of boing able to take aggressive action of any kind or of ameliorating her desperate military position to the slightest degree. There is no reason to suppose that a nation which had made reasonable preparations for war with atomic bombs would inevitably be in a suffering the first blow. [y Ve, An invasion designed to prevent large-scale retaltativo od to surrender after ith atomic bombs to any considerable degree would have to be incredibly swift and sufficiently powerful to overwhelm instantly any opposition. Morcover, it would have to descend in one fell swoop upon points scattered throughout the length and breadth of the ecneny territory. The question arises whether such an operation is possible, especially across broad water barricrs, against any great power which is not completely asleep and which has sizable armed forces at its disposal, It is clear that existing types of forces can be much casier reorganized to resist the kind of invasion here envisaged than to enable them to conduct so rapid an offensive. Extrene swiftness of invasion would denand aircraft for transport and supply rather than surface vessels guarded by sea power. But the mere necessity of speed does not create the conditions under which an invasion solely by air will be successful, especially against large and well-organized forces deployed over considerable space. In the recent war the specialized air~borne infantry div- isions comprised a very small proportion of the armies of cach of the belligerents, The.bases from which thay were launched were in every case relatively close to the objective, and oxcopt at Crete thcir mission was always to cooperatc with much larger forces approaching by land or sea, To be sure, if the air forees arc relieved by the atomic bomb of the burden of devoting great nur bers of aircraft to strategic bombing with ordinary bombs, thoywill be able to accept to a much greatcr extent than heretofore the task of serving as a mediun of transport and supply for the infantry. But it should be noticed that the cnormous extension of range for bombing purposes which the atomic bomb makes