THE FLYING MACHINE.

Timaru Herald, Volume XIIC, Issue 14053, 10 November 1909, Page 7

THE FLYING MACHINE.

IN FUTURE WARS. "To sit tight at the water-gates while Britannia rules the waves has been so delightfully easy a task that even a l'nmcr One Scholar could ask i.otiting simpler. A.>i'a might fret and Africa "fume, but when wo winked at Jack and Jack winked back at us, what could Asia and Africa do about it? Tho Hindoo was our fellow subject, and the Chinese, our fellow man, and the Jap. our little brown brother, but when the sailor said they couldn't play in our yard or come to tea without" an invitation, they might as well have been resident in the newplanet just discovered for all wo cared. But it will all be different, altogether different—when the sky rains Japs. "This flying machine business is hko the discovery of a new dimension. It is calculated to upset everything that was based upon the assumption that it didn't exist. Human movements we assumed —with good reason at the time —to be Rmited to length and breadth, to crawl to and fro upon the surface of land and water. Suddenly in liml that there is dept also, thatin the depths of the air Mankind can live and move and have passing place as easily as anywhere else. Whereupon, as though by magic and enchantment, every part of the earth's surface bc- . vMi.es a port, every square yard a •u.ix-pl.u.c ,wVcr/ lower mile of tho alliiic.ri.iiug atmosphere, a travel-route. i..iventi» are no longer confined to i..i,..;i\a at sea, to railways and main iuiu:? <ju lanu, to ports tnat will auco.iiiiiouatc great snips. Wo may as ..ill try to lenco our birds with rab-»uriit.-t,uiig as talk about exclusion •• There would be about as much chance of a policeman catching a boy ... ;. l.iiiHion log as of anything or anybody catching an airship in a cto'ud. To smuggle a Chinaman into Aiichiaiui—lee: JJIUO and no questions asked —would be as easy as crossing tisc harbour on a ferry boat to the aeronaut who is coming along. He need only pick tho time when tho clouds dime rolling down from tho north-east, and come dodging along behind them until he grounds in the "Waitakereis or alongside the Cambridge Sanatorium, or on a dark night in any suburban market garden. 'You savey, John, lie low and my man he come along,' says the aeronaut'to. Ins discharged passengers, who have signed an agreement to work for a; thousand years' at sixpence per day, and whoso fathers and mothers and sisters and brothers and children and wives have pledged life and liberty on the bond somewhere in heathen China. Then —whiff 1 Off be goes for another cargo, awaiting him up in Fiji or at New Caledonia or anywhere handy, whero a Chinaman is legal. This is how the aeronaut will make an ; honest penny sooner than we may think. And it will be still simpler when tho sky rains Japs. ■ j . "It will appear some day—up North at the East Cape, down Kawhia way, somewhere—the first Japanese settlement. Somebody will suddenly discover a valley where little brown men aro already living in paper houses and making antique curios and matches that won't strike on the box, and growing Satsuma plums to corner tho jam trade. That somebody will decide not to mention it if he is foolish enough to investigate off-hand and alone, but sooner or later; somebody wise will make a bee-line for the nearest police station. Then wo shall have flare lines in the daily press and thrilling speeches in Parliament,, and sternly reassuring manifestoes from Ministers, and the Foreign Office will promise to make representations and tho schoolmasters will harangue little boy cadets upon their glorious privilege of dying for a country that stops training them when they leave school, and hasn't rifles enough to equip a single army corps. Then the- clouds will blow down from the north clouds of aeroplanes, and the sky will rain Tiey won't come to war, not they. Thpy will have to use laud which we aren't using, to plant fruit trees where they find forest, to make curies out of clay and matches out of Pinus insignis, and to put Woman in her place according to the Japanese ideal. But they will bring along their little guns with them, and start a cordite factory in their happy valley, and they won't understand that the Government wants rent from anybody who starts clearing operations on a national endowment block, and that when a ranger tells you that you have squatted on Native Land you must put out your clearing fires and go. And they will teach us various other little lessons when the sky rains Japs. "Fight 'em! Of course, we'll try to fight 'em, but with what? Shall we put warships on skids and drag them to intercede for us? Shall we cable to Birmingham for rifles and ask the Australians, whoso hands will be fuller than ours, to come over and help us because they have trained themselves to fight while we haven't?

Shall wo implore Germany to take cur empty wastes and pour her reservists into tbem as much the least of two evils? Of shall we pass resolutions to the effect that the country is already over-populated and- publish them throughout Japan and 'China and India, so that the Asiatics, may decide nob to come? Guess anything jou like, and it probably wouldn't be too wilu a guess as to how'wo shall try to put up an umbrella when tho sky rains Japs? "And yet! New Zealand might easily make itself tho last place in the world that a Jap. or a Hindoo or any Asiatic would wish to Uy to, however much they might hover occasionally like a moth in the neighbourhood ok' a humming hive. If every fertile patch were a httlo "farm, ami stony hillside a big farm; it every boy were bred a rifleman, and cur bustling workshops turned out aeroplanes by tho. gross with skilful craftsmen to handle them; if we looked vpon our own people as a great fainily and upon idle land as a proof of crime tt-mlc any "English, hands were idle; then we could laugh at the idea that the sky might rain Japs." " New Zealand Herald."