THE FLYING MACHINE IN WAR.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume LX, Issue 9347, 19 April 1909, Page 3

THE FLYING MACHINE IN WAR.

DR RUSSEL WALLACE'S APPEAL

The Daily News refers iv its editorial columns to ;i letter which it publishes from Dr Alfred Russel Wallace appealing to th? Government to take the initiative agaiust the horrors of war by flyiug machine. Dr Wallace's uauie (the journal says) is pre-eini-ueut in tlie world of science, aud there is almost a touch of pathos iv iiis contemplation, in the closiug days of a loug life (he is now iv his eighty-seventh year) of the destruction which science, through the flyiug machine, may bring upou the ueace of the world. Perhaps there is uothiug whic/i marks in a greater degree thau the fiyiug machiue itself the revolution which has takeu place in the sceiuce of war. Madame De Stael, iv her memoirs, records the phase of her day, that "the empire of the sea belongs to the British, the empire of tiie laud to the French, aud the empire of the air to the Germans. " But the empire of the air is uo louger a gibe at the dreams of German philosophy, as readers of Mr H. G. Well's

•War in the Air" will be the first to admit. The disquieting fact to-day, as Dr Wallace suggests, is that the development of air machiue is largely iv the hands of military experts. We admit that the dauger of what we may call, "air power" lias beeu foreseen, aud that some of the Governments of the world have iv some degree bouud themselves iv regard to it. At the receut Hague Conference, for instance, oue of the declarations ran:—"The coutractiug Powers agree to prohibit for a period extending to the close of the third Peace Goufereuce the discharge of projectiles aud explosives from balloons or by other new methods of a similar nature." So far that is good, but the declaration ouly binds the coutractiug Powers iv case of war between two or more of them, aud it ceases to be operative when oue of the belligerents is joined by anon-contracting Power. We cordially eudorse Dr Wallace's appeal.