Nowadays marvelous scientific discoveries come upon
us so thick and fast, that we have almost lost the capacity for wonder. Yet
although airplanes are almost as familiar to us as motor-cars, we cannot help
stopping and starting whenever an airplane, humming like a great bee and
flashing in the sun, passes over our heads. And it is well indeed that we
should wonder; for how marvelous a thing it is that men have conquered the air
and can now fly in the sky like birds! And this has been done in our own day:
for the invention is so recent that, if people had been told only twenty five
years ago that we should be flying to-day. They would have laughed the prophecy
to scorn.
The invention of the airplane will bring about as
great a revolution in men’s habits as that of the railway engine and the
steam-ship a hundred years ago. Then the world shrank in size; for, whereas in
the old days of sailing vessels. England was six months away from Pakistan; it
is now only three weeks away by steamer and railway train. But the size of the
world will shrink much more now. When in a few years’ time we have a regular
air service between Karachi and London. England will be only five days away.
What a difference this will make to trade and commerce, to men’s habits and
their views of things.
So much for times of peace. But it is in the
conduct of war that the airplane will bring about the greatest revolution.
airplanes played an important part in the latter
part of the Great War, although when the war began the invention was only a few
years old. But when the next war comes, it will be largely a war in the air.
Frontiers, fortresses, wire-entanglements, the ocean itself, will be no
protection to any country. A fleet of battle-airplanes, loaded with poisonous
gas and tons of high explosive bombs, will be able to wipe out a great city in
a few minutes. And the man’s wonderful conquest of the air, they should have
been nothing but a blessing, will prove a curse, and his undoing.