AIRSHIPS AND WAR.

Bruce Herald, Volume XLV, Issue 6, 2 August 1909, Page 3

AIRSHIPS AND WAR.

(Clutha Leader.)

The apparation of an airship whether actual or imaginary—hovering over the peaceful shores of our remote island forcibly brings home to! us the immense progress that has been made in aerial navigation, arid! also the sinister possibilities withj which that progress is fraught. For, unhappily, the airship comes into existence as an engine of war. It is the sad distinction of modem aerial locomotion'that it was not devised, as were the railway and the steamship, to serve man's peaceful activities, but solely to aid in his murderous strife with his fellows. Tenny-. son, 70 years ago, with the prophetic vision of a poet,

"Saw the Heavens fill with commerce, argosies of magic sails, Pilots of the purple twilight, dropi ping down with costly bales ; Heard the Heavens fill with shouting, and there rained a ghastly dew From the nations' airy navies grappling in the central blue."

The picture of aerial strife is more in accordance with probability and present facts than the peaceful one of tho first two lines. It would be rash to place limits to the achievements of science in any direction. Yet it is scarcely conceivable that carriage by air can ever cease to be immensely more costly and also more dangerous than carriage by land or water. Ain ships and Hying machines may bo largely employed for pleasure, and have great possibilities in exploration and scientific observation, but it is not likely that they will subserve ordinary industry to any great extent. It is the possibilities of the airship in war that have stimulated, invention, and that are now urging the nations to compete with one another in, the conquest of the air. Germany, so far, is very much ahead in the race, disquietingly so for Britain, which seems only waking up to the menace of aerial warfare. Last year Germany spent £133,731 upon experiments in aerial navigation for military purposes, besides £205,000 raised by private subscription ; Britain only a paltry £5,270. Yet Britain has more to lose than any other power' from inferiority in warlike appliances whose use by a hostile power would so largely destroy the immunity hitherto secured her by her insular position. This inertness on the part of British authorities is due no doubt to want of credence in the practical utility of the airship in war. But the example of the Germans, who are riot an unpractical people, should earlier than this have been set against preconceived opinion. Airships may not be able to transport regiments, nor even to carry guns of large calibre. But Sir Hiram Maxim, a great authority on mechanics, has recently said in a speech at the Londan Mansion House, that within a few years we shall certainly have machines capable of travelling at GO miles an hour and of. carrying 1500 pounds ; and that we must, whether we like it or not, face the problem of a perfectly unique mode of warfare. And an article by Captain Tulloch in the Nineteenth Century, throws a lurid light on what the new warfare may imply for England. If hostile airships could reach a position over the estuary of the Thames, they could work untold disaster. Here lie thousands of merchant ships ; the banks are crowded with warehouses and fac-' torios, many of them full of highlyj inflamable material, and tho great Woolwich arsenal contains supplies of explosives for the whole Empire. "This whole 50 miles of concentrated essence of Empire lies at the mercy of even a single airship or aerial chine which could plant a dozen 'incendiary missiles in certain prc-sclcc-ted spots." No wonder that the British Government is now tardily waking up to the necessity of constructing dirigible airships and aeroplanes, and of securing scientific skill equal to that at the command of Germany. For, unless the great Powers can come to a mutual agreement to forgo aerial apparatus in warfare, there is nothing for it but to keep pace with Germany. And there is no hope of the former alternative, rational though it be.