216 THE LANGLEY AERODKOME. 



will keep out the foe. iind when the difficulties of defending" a eountry 

 against an attacking eneiii}- in the air will ])e such that we may hope 

 that this will hasten rather than retard the coming of the day when 

 war shall cease. 



1 have thus far had only a purely scientific interest in the residts of 

 these labors. Perhaps if it could have been foreseen at the outset how 

 imich labor there was to be, how much of life would be given to it, and 

 hoAV nuich care. I might have hesitated to enter upon it at all. And 

 now reward nuist be looked for, if reward there be, in the knowledge 

 that 1 have done the best I could in a difficult task, with results which 

 it may ])e hoped will be useful to others. I have l)rought to a close 

 the portion of the work which seemed to be specially mine — the dem- 

 onstration of the practicabilit}' of mechanical flight — and for the next 

 stage, which is the commercial and practical development of the idea, 

 it is probable that the world may look to others. The world, indeed, 

 will be supine if it do not rcnilize that a new possil)ility has come to it, 

 and that the great universal highway overhead is now soon to be 

 opened. 



