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Aviation History
1913
1913 - 0409.PDF
APRIL 12, 1913, •'PUT NOT YOUR TRUS IT IS some few years now since we had the editorial pleasure of commenting on the fine imaginative work of Mr. H. G. Wells in respect to the future of flying. Indeed, it was prior to the foundation of this journal as a separate entity, when it was still a part of the Auto, that we last discussed his vivid pen pictures of the possible future war in the air. The articles that he has written these last few days in the Daily Mail naturally recall his novels, but it is not mere fiction this which Mr. Wells is now presenting to the public of England through such a widely-read channel. Imagination it may be, but it is an imagination of the kind that we need in these Isles. " For soniL- years there seems to have been a complete arresi of the British imagination in naval and military matters. That declining faculty, never a very active or well-exercised one, staggered up to the conception of a Dreadnought and seems now to have sat (own for good, lis riply to every demand upon it ha* been ' mote lireadnoughu.' The futuic as we British seem to see it is an avenue of Dreadnoughts and Super-Dreadnoughts and Super-Super-Dreadnoughts, getting bigger and bigger in a kind of inverted perspective. But the ascendancy of fleets of great battle ships in naval warfare, like the phase of huge conscript armies upon land, draws to its close. The progress of invention makes both the big ship and the army crowd more and more vulnerable and less and less effective. A new phase of warfare opens beyond the visu of our current programmes. Smaller, more numerous and various and mob.le weapons and craft ard contrivances, manned by daring and highly skilled men must ultimately take the place of those massivenesses. We are entering upon a period in which the invention of methods and material for war is likely to lie more rapid and various than it has ever been before, and the question of what we have been doing behind the splendid line of our Dread noughts to meet the demands of this new phase is one of supreme importance. Knowing, as I do, the tremendous imaginative indolence of my countrymen, it is a question 1 face with something very near to dismay. " But it is one that has to be faced." In order to find force to his argument Mr. Wells is perhaps somewhat inclined to overstride intermediate stages in progressive development. We scarcely agree with his dictum " Put not your trust in Dreadnoughts," but if he will allow us to add the word "alone " to the end of his text, then certainly we are quite at one with him. Nothing is more apparent to imaginative thinkers who have allowed their minds to dwell upon the real sig nificance of aerial navigation than that Great Britain must keep abreast of other powers in the matter of aerial armament. We do not suppose for a moment that the aeroplane or the dirigible in their present state have rendered obsolete the fighting ship that sails the sea, but we do agree that as accessories to the effective use of those water-borne machines, the aeroplane and the airship are as essential as the submarine, or the torpedo boat. " This country most of all, which was left so far behind in the production of submarines, airships and aeroplanes, must be made to realise the folly of its trust in established things. Each new thing we take up more belatedly and reluctantly than its predecessor. The time is not far distant when we shall be ' caught ' lagging unless we change all this. " We need a new arm to our service ; we need it urgently, and we shall need it more and more, and that arm is Research. We need to place inquiry and experiment upon a new footing altogether, to enlist for them and organise them, to secure the pick of our young chemist s and physicists and engineers, and to get them to work systematically upon the anticipation and preparation of our future war equipment. We need a service of invention to recover our lost lead in these matters. " And it is because I feel so keenly the want of such a service, and the want of great sums of money for it, that I deplore the disposition to waste millions upon the basly creation of a universal service army and upon excessive Dreadnoughting. I am convinced that we are spending upon the things of yesterday the money that is sorely needed for the things of to-morrow. "With our eyes averted obstinately from the future we are backing towards disaster." [#1113 T IN DREADNOUGHTS." Mr. Wells is quite right ill his analysts Of reliant phases of the British character. As • nation we are obsessed with the sense of being past middle age. We have lost our interest in toys and we are apt so to regard new things that are neither quite perfect m themiehwi nor thoroughly understood. We have a fondness fot "established tilings' and sing our part in the gtand concert of the Powers with dignified mien and mellow voice. What we lack most is the inabilitv to unbend in the bosoms of our own homes, to encourage the mure youthful players with real enthusiasm in the evolution of a new idea—which one day will in its turn have btOOIBe an established thing. The great value of Mr. Wells' articles is that they are constructive as well as critical. He dues nut 0intent himself with pulling down the existing edifice, pour as it is, but offers cogent and sensible ideas for the new building to be erected OO its ruins. In the last article of the series he points out that— " We are buying enonnous quantities of stuff that will l>e old iron in twenty years' time, and we are starving ourselves ol that which cannot be bought or made in a hurry and upon which the strength of nations ultimately rests altogether •, we are failing to get and maintain a sufficiency of highly educated and developed men inspired by a tradition of service and efficiency.' We have already traversed the idea underlying Mr. Wells' line of thought—that we should discontinue the building of a battle-fleet—and in that we disagree with him ; but for the rest we are content to travel all the way as he takes us. Nothing truer has been written on the subject of national defence than the passage quoted below:— "A great system of laboratories and expciimrmal stations, a systematic, industrious increase of men of the officer aviator type, of the research-"tudcnt type, of the engineer type, of the naval- officer type, of the skilled sergeant-instructor type, a methodical development of a common 'cntiment and a common zeal among such a liody of men, is an added strength that grows greater I om the moment you call it into being. " . . . . Now that possible campaign away there, whatever its particular nature may be, which will lie shaping out military and naval policy in the year 1933 or thereabouts, will certainly be quite different in its conditions from the possible campaign in Europe ami the narrow seas which determine sail our preparations now .... All our present stuff, indeed, will lw on the scrap-heap then. What will not be on the setap-heap will be such enterprise and special science and inventive power as we have got together. That is versatile. That is good to have now, and that will be good to have 'hen. " At present we spend about eighteen and a half millions a year upon education out of our national funds, but fourteen and a half of this, supplemented by aliout as much again from local sources, is consumed in merely elementary teaching. So that we spend only about (our millions a year of public money on every sort of research and education above the simple democratic level. Nearly tlmty millions for the foundations, and only a seventh for the edifice of will and science ! Is it any marvel that, directly we aie teMcil by such a new development as that of aeroplanes or airships, wc show ourselves, in comparison with the more braced-up nations of the ( ontinent, backward, unorganised, unimr.ginatjve, unenterprising ?" Truly, Mr. Wells has contributed to the literature of a national defence a series of articles which mark a distinct departure in the character of the viewpoint Irom which the subject is usually approached. To say that they provide much food for serious thought is meter] to utter a platitude. They go much deeper than that—they present the matter in all its phases in a way that must carry conviction to the mind of every thinking person who reads them; and if they do not produce a deep effect on the public and those to whom the work of defence is delegated, then we are indeed, as a people, hopeless. 5
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