Is the Aeroplane the Harbinger of Peace?

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XLIII, Issue 16, 20 October 1909, Page 46

Is the Aeroplane the Harbinger of Peace?

(By

W. T. STEAD.)

It does not require much prescience to forsee that armaments will soon go the way of armour, and that twelve-inch guns will soon be as obsolete as the sixfoot bow. The coming of the aeroplane will revolutionise everything. Austria, it is said, is about to launch out into a huge expenditure on Dreadnoughts. The king of Italy showed a keener insight into the probabilities of the future when he said two years ago: “Why should we spend two millions over a huge ironclad when there Lj every reason to believe an aeroplane costing no more than a motor car may reduce it to old iron before it leaves the stocks?” 1 still have a lively sense of the emphasis with which M. d’ Aehrenthal assured me on the eve of the late Hague conference that peace apostles could not be more profitably employed than in urging the parliaments of the world to make grants for the building of airships, for when the airship comes frontiers, fortresses, fleets go—everything goes. The German minister for foreign affairs told me in 1907 that they never for a moment allowed themselves to lose sight of the airship. Because when that comes it will revolutionize everything. The airship has come, and has come to stay. The deliberate judgment of the Italian military aeronauts that in 1912 there will be as many aeroplanes in the air as there are now motor cars in the streets bids fair to be an accomplished fact. I have been repeating these warnings for the last five years. Every one is beginning to admit that there may, after all, be something in it. But what that something is few persons save imaginative speculators like H. G. Wells have even dimly begun to perceive. What the airship carries beneath its planes is the most far reaching revolution that has ever transformed the world. That revolution may be beneficent beyond the hopes of the greatest Utopians or it may be maleficent beyond the fears of the worst pessimist. The aeroplane may be called the avantcoureur of the international world-state or the herald of the ruin of civilization. “Be my brother or I will slay thee,” the French revolutionist’s formula, will now be revived with an infinitely wider application; because the airship represents an addition to the forces of destruction so vast, so incalculable that it places human society at the mercy of any of its component parts. The aeroplane dashing through 1 he air at 100 miles an hour capable of d'.opping 100 pounds of high explosives or of asphyxiating shells on any point from any height is the nearest approximation which mankind has made to the dis-

covery of vril. It was by the invention of vril—that potent compound of electricity and dynamite by which a child could destroy an army by waving a wand—that Lord Lytton prophesied the ultimate extinction of war. The aeroplane is the next step to vril. For it places illimitable forces of destruction at the disposal of any one who can raise £ 10,000 and find half a dozen desperadoes to do his bidding. What this means is that the human race which has hitherto organized itself for defence from enemies on or below the world’s surface is absolutely unprotected from attack from above. The opportunity which this gives to the) anarchist and the desperado was perceived years ago by M. Azeff when he recommended the Russian revolutionists to resort to the aeroplane as the most effective means of destroying the government. If the governments do not cease their absolutely fatuous' habit of preparing for war with each other they may find themselves confronted by forces of disorder armed with new and invincible weapons, against which they themselves will be powerless. Should they let hell loose by making war upon each other heaven itself would rain hell fire upon the modern cities of the plain. In sheer self-defence the instinct of self-preservation ought to compel governments to federate into one international world-state, with international tribunals interpreting the laws of an international parliament, whose decisions would be enforced by an executive without whose command appeal tn force on earth, or air, or sea would be absolutely forbidden. This may read like Utopia. But it is the only alternative to the destruction of civilisation. If we refuse to recognise that the aeroplane will soon render war impossible, human society may find itself hurled with hideous ruin and combustion down to bottomless perdition like Lucifer and his hosts in “Paradise Lost.” The minds of men, especially of ruling men, are slow to perceive the signs of the times. But the aeroplane, which renders armaments obsolete, will probably open their eyes to its significance by abolishing frontiers. The smugglers of the air will have everything their own way. It will be impossible to- enforce the payment of customs duties on any goods save those which are imported by the ton. The drying up of the customs! revenue may predispose governments first to reduce and then to abandon their, armaments. But meantime all the more thoughtful among us will do well to fix our minds upon the supreme question: When the aeroplane comes and the old order goes what is to take the place of war?