THE CONQUEST OF THE AIR.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLII, Issue 12931, 29 July 1905, Page 1 (Supplement)

THE CONQUEST OF THE AIR.

[by tohunga.]

It doesn't take very long to say " flying machine" if one says it quickly, nor do we usually give more time to thinking out what a really successful airship may mean. We read of aeronauts steering their way high above London and Paris, sweeping in great circles, tacking to and fro, up and down, and with eveiy fresh airship a- little better than the one before. But we hardly take the trouble to wonder what the end may be, and whether these indefatigable would-be fliers are not the forerunners of some stupendous change. In the first place, the successful airship may prelude universal peace through universal empire. Was it not Palmerston who said that he couldn't send men-o'-wars to Vienna? But if mcn-o'-war could sail the air as now they sail the seas the British flag on emergency might float over Vienna —a mile or two over—as easily as it now floats over the Dogger Bank. And, to balance it, the German flag might float over Russia, and the Japanese flag over Auckland, just as easily, unless our airships could annihilate theirs at the outbreak of possible trouble. For you cannot lay mines among the clouds, or torpedo a hawk two miles high, as a regular thing. A rifleman who can drop a hawk flying a hundred yards up, and two hundred yards away, is a crack marksman. And the gunner who could hit a moving airship two miles high, otherwise than by accident, isn't yet born. So that when the air is conquered there will not be, and cannot be., room on the earth for two . rival Powers, because there cannot bo room on the earth for two opposite sets of airships. Take the Kniaz Potemkine! The Black

Sea mutineers fling the officers overboard and cruise about ou the free and easy. Within range of their guns they dominate the Russian coast, and are only in danger when they venture 011 land, beyond the range of their fire. Thus protected they bury their dead with naval honours in the teeth of ten thousand Cossacks, and inarch back to their boats to the sound of slow

music. Now, supposing the Kniaz Potenikine had been an airship instead of a sea-

ship ! What price would offer for the Russian Crown, and its Pitt Diamond, when the mutineers steered north among the clouds and demanded the surrender of the Tsar, under penalty of • dropping high explosives 011 to his palace? There could be no effective refusal. As long as the airship remains afloat and in fighting trim she must necessarily bear unchallenged dominion over everything beneath Jier that isn't bombproof. The world could not long endure such ai situation. Wc bear up now because, after all, war is not so certain a game that victory can be counted upon beforehand, and the great majority of the citizens of a country are usually exempt from personal danger anyway. Thus, even the greatest Powers are ohary of provoking hostilities, and we arc rapidly drifting into the condition of Mediaeval Italy when the military art became diplomatic and campaigns were really settled in the Cabinets of neighbouring States rather than on the battlefields. A fleet can bombard a,' coast city, but this is only a smack in the face to most countries, calculated to make them fight harder to make up,for it. And an invasion can only advance mile by mile over land, of which every ridge is a fortress and every river a defensive moat. But bring along the airship— and where are you? ■ An airship it) as good as a battleship that can go to Vienna, and better. It can move over land as over sea, lurking among the clouds, and 'rising high above any possible danger, excepting by another airship. It can make the Channel 110 longer the guardian of English liberty; it can defy at once all our present naval and military skill and science. That is, of course, the perfected airship, which isn't yet, but may be some day, and at the first appearance of which the political world, as we know it to-day, will begin to fade away. For all airships must finally come under one control. There can soon be only one supreme government among the nations, when it once becomes possible to rain down explosives upon London, and New York, and Berlin, and Tokio from the skies. For if the building of rival navies which arc powerless away from deep water make .the nations uneasy, how shall wc think of one another when fleets begin to be built from whose attacks no spot 011 the wide world is safe? The sequence of events when once the great airship sweeps hawklike up in the sky is apparent and inevitable. It will be prodigiously costly, and only producible upon lines adapted to warlike operations by the most powerful governments. These governments will exhaust their resources in making and equipping air fleets, and will be driven into combinations by the impossibility of any single government standing alone and by the recognised penalty of defeat. • And when war comes it will come with a crash and be fought with what would appear now to be infamous ferocity. The struggle will come in the air, as Tennyson foresaw, and the defeated will be annihilated, for no refuge will be possible and 110 sanctuary recognised. Scaships will bo sunk, and fortresses destroyed by those who. fight from the skies and have won tho mastery of the air. Hugo armies will move unchecked ,under the protection of their victorious airships, whose escort will make every sea safe to transports and every frontier powerless to resist invasion. The conquered must necessarily accept the terms of their eonquerors, 'the first and foremost of whose terms must unquestionably be that 110 airships of war shall be owned by the vanquished. War after war will arise, and close, until all military power on the earth lies wit., one nation or combination of friend-

ly nations, probably the latter, who have agreed to trade on friendly terms with one another, to submit all their disputes to common arbiters, and to maintain a monopoly of these terrific weapons of aerial war. It isn't the question whether some one Power will or will not rise to the top in the age of airships and subordinate all other Powers to its authority. That, is certain, fixed, unalterable. The question is: Which Power shall it be? Will the Anglo-Saxons prove the strongest, and the most enduring, or the Latins, or the Tartars, or the ChinoJapanese? That is the uncertainty, and things will be very interesting while the doubt is being settled. For the age of the airships will be above all other ages the age of disciplined Courage, the ago that will belong to the men who can become ; parts of a living, breathing machine,, .and set physical and mental fears alike under their feet. Imagine the disciplined courage that will grapple a little airship to a big airship, and shatter them together into atoms, four miles from the ground! Conceive the heroism of the last stand of an overwhelmed crew that fights to the last gasp, and strike? its last 'blow as the broken airship hurtles down to death! Picture the dauntless skill and subtle instincts that can steer an airship through a storm, whose fierce gusts attack from every side its delicate equilibrium, the engineering genius that will patch an injured ship in high heaven and sustain its limping flight towards safety, across thousands of miles of sea! The man who thinks that there is less place for- skill and courage among such civilised conditions than when naked man fought astride logs, with broken boughs, surely fails of imagination. For only the truest courage, the greatest personal self-control, the swiftest individuality, can help the 11a- ! tion fated to rise supreme among all ' hers I by the conquest of the air.