i6 
LAND & WATER 
October ii, 1917. 
together to-dav in aircraft factories, when through the silent 
silvern night -skv there comes thq droning of the bombing 
machines, that music of hell's harps and the devil's organs of 
death. Whether it be possible to construct a silent aeroplane 
is a question unlikely to be solved in the immediate future. 
Kut as a matter of fact the.se Inar^■ellous mechanisms interest 
<inc far less through their present uses tlian for the capabilities 
that lie before them, when blood no longer flows. 
The Uncharted Sky 
Those who ha\-c watched squadrons of say ten or twenty 
planes manueuvring. must ha\e been struck with the immensity 
of space. An aeroplane flying at a hundred miles an hour 
will at 10,000 feet appear " almost stationary. It seems to 
ilrift slowly out of sight not bv its own volition. The pitfalls 
and eddies that lie a' few thousand feet above the ground are 
already familiar to airmen : when the height rises into five 
figures it is said that a Sargasso Sea is encountered— a region 
of perfect calm. But these altitudes in temperate climates 
are not without surprises, and when the upper currents of the 
Tropical Zone and possibly of the Frigid Zone are explored, 
other riddles will have to be read. It is doubtful whether the 
machine is yet built that rising from beside the OuciiterUmy 
Monument on the Calcutta maidan can. soar northwards and 
descend upon the highest plateau of Mount Everest a few- 
hours later, but it is absolutely certain, having advanced so 
far, it is only a question of time and experience before this 
flight is accomplishe<l. E\-en now we know more about the 
uncharted sky than' the Roman conquerors of this island 
did of the Gulf Stream. It is only by glancing backward 
that we can discern how much farther forward it is pt)ssible 
we may go. Already there are aeroplanes in the air -Dread- 
noughts of the sky as they were called in Land & W.^ter a 
few weeks ago — which are capable of carrying a dozen 
])assengers from dawn to sunset of an autumn day without 
descending. Turn over the files of London newspapers 
seventy to eighty years old and peruse the fears and doubts 
concerning the new fashion of railroad travelling. It was 
thought a man would be stifled through lack of air if a train 
moved at fifty miles an hour. Such fears do not trouble 
to-day the most timid in regard to flight. 
()n a perfect auturtn day — brilliant sun and windless blue 
skv — the writer stood on a wide stretch of meadowland. 
not far from London, withhalf a score of aeroplanes soaring at 
all heights above his head. Earlier in the day he had visited 
workshops in which men and women were busy and watched 
how out of crude lumps of metal, and unbarked trunks of 
trees there grew into being a wonderful web of the most 
delicate frame-work, light yet so strong that it seemed the very 
poetry of handicraft. The wood lent itself to the saw, 
and the sawdust, sucked in by the fans, was turned into gas 
so that the air the work-folk breathed remained pure, and new 
driving power w-as created- through wliat, in former times, 
had to Ix- remo\ed at considerable labour and cost. The 
workshops were large, lofty and cheerful, and it was easy for 
those employed in the toil to go out and see the miracle they 
had helped to create, singing through tlv? upper air and 
tuning its voice liere in E.ngland to take part in that hymn of 
battle that shall presently swell into a loud chorus of victory 
over there in l-"rance and Flanders. Throughout these work- 
shops one was conscious of a spirit of conuadeship which took 
away from the work the drag of drudgery. It is a joy of 
aircraft-building that the least imaginative can almost behold 
the creature forming itself into life, so clearly defined are the 
separate processes. Behind this let there be intelligent 
direction and that single purpose of achievement which is 
the secret of the best regimental spirit, in that it compels" 
the individual to set abo\'c himself the honour and credit of 
regiment or workshop, and you have an almost ideal condition 
of industrial life. 
It was now the afternoon. Standing in the grateful shade 
of an avenue that approached an old manor-house, with its 
Tudor w'allcd garden behind one where peaches and pears 
were ripening in the open air, one looked over acres of 
grassland. In the distance netv workshops were rising rapidly 
into existence : and the sun glistened on their roofs of glass 
and galvanised iron. Behind them was the spire of the parish 
church, and it was part of the picture. Gangs of men were 
hard at w6rk in deep cuttings, for in another week the canal 
which Cardinal Wolsey had constructed to carry water to his 
pet project at Hampton Court, is to be turned under- 
ground by the Lord Ma\or of London, so that these meadows 
will form one huge unbroken lawn, a perfect place for the 
u imsiiig and landing of planes. ' ' A thing of beautv is a joy for 
ever," and one never tires of watching a well-driven aeroplane 
running along the grass and lifting itself into the' air ; or when 
it returns, dropping gently down and lightlV-traversing the 
{"round before it comes to'reSt. It is- an exultant sight, for 
it suggests that man has at last freed himself from the bonds 
of 'earth, thougii if he be not skilful he quickly finds earth 
remains an uncommonly solid fact. 
One could not but wonder whether, were the great English 
Cardinal to re-visit these meadow-s he knew so well, he would 
be surprised. One doubts it. There is not so much altered 
in England as we are apt to imagine, and it has always been 
contrary to the English character to express emotion at mere 
mechanical contrivances, liowever new and noisy they may be. 
He would be much more lik^h' to begin with criticism and to 
end by doubting the utility or beneficence of flying, unless 
concrete evidence could be produced. This Mr. James 
Whitehead (for his are the aircraft works and aerodrome here 
described) should not have any difficulty in doing ; and his 
own typical British energy and force of character would 
doubtless appeal to \\olse>" who ever liked Englishmen who 
were able to get things done and done well. 
The spirit of nil admirari. the slowness to accept a new in- 
\-ent:on or development is a common taunt against the 
British character in regard to the building of air squadrons. 
Whether we could have moved quicker is a question th«re is 
no intention of discussing here ; at any rate the reproach 
has passed, and liberal private support, one understands, is 
forthcoming for aircraft enterprises that have proved them- 
selves worthy of it. But the refusal of the Briton to allow 
his emotions to be excited by new in\entions or novel claims 
is a diii'erent matter. On the whole one leans to the belief 
that it is not so much luigland as Germany which has 
suffered from this national trait in so far as the building of 
fl^dng machines is concerned. During the attacks on London 
by (iothas, nothing was mbre noticeable among British 
residents, men, women and children, than their refusal to 
be terrorised. The majority, there is reason to think, never 
really realised the machiires that were endeavouring to 
break across the sky through our defences. They seemed 
to regard the bombardment as though a Thor, some godless 
Teuton god, was striving to hurl his thunderbolts on this 
city from Germanv, and it was these bolts that our batteries 
were flinging back. Thev spoke of it as it might be a new 
sort of ball game— a meaii kind of cricket or football on a big 
scale. Cheers were on tap at the least excuse, chaff was 
plentiful, so was bad language, but not a craven word. 
True to Nature 
By the gate 6f a certain London house there stands a 
chestnut tree overshadowing the pavement. On one of the 
bombardment nights with the guns still firing in the distance, 
the owner came out to reconnoitre in slippered feet. He be- 
came aware he was interrupting a love scene, for in the silence 
of the night a girl's voice rang out clearly, " Well, I can't 
exactly say I love you, but I do really like you." Gothas or 
no Gcithas, English courting had to be done. That same 
night there was a sequel, a pathetic sequel, to this story. 
An old couple had for years made it a Jiabit on fine nights to 
take a walk on open ground near their home before going-' tc 
bed. It was glorious moonlight ; and Germans or no Germans 
they refused to interrupt their practice. . They strolled to 
their favoiu-ite bench, sat down, and a bomb falling just be- 
hind them, killed both instantly. It was sorrowful, yet one 
cannot help thinking that a cheer must have gone up as their 
souls passed together into the courts of Heaven—true Britons 
to their last breath. 
It will be urged that both these couples were foolish. 
It may be so. If was certainly foolish of Englishmen in old 
da\'s to drink bottled beer on the plains of Hindustan, and to 
pay duty calls in top-hat and frock-coat under a Bengal mid- 
day sun. It killed off many of them. These dangerous 
habits were due to the same trait— stubborn conservatism, 
refusal to accept new fangled ideas, determination to be true 
to oneself, though the skies fall. Call it foolishness if you 
will ; it has been wasteful of human life, Init it has won Britain 
an limpire. There is no more inexplicable fact in the growth 
of the human family, not even the persistent sur\-ival of the 
Bedouin trilx- of Beni-Israel, than that a small hybrid people 
of the Northern Seas should have developed, alongside 
enormous energy and an insatiable craving for adventure, 
the same slow-moving spirit, the same blind devotion tc 
-tradition w^hich animate the peoples of the Orient, with their 
more ancient civilisations. 
Tlie subject cannot be pursued here, space forbids it, but 
it is impossible to write about aeroplanes without entering 
a protest against intemix-rate indictments which have been 
uttered against us for not plunging more swiftly on this new 
weapon of war. Had F-ngland done this she would not have 
l^en true -to her nature, and„\vhatever ])unishment she may 
have .received in consequence of this slowness to movCj is 
light -Gompkred with tha:t:- which' might have ' happened had 
she proved false to herself. TlwIWa'point toooften ovcrlooKed. 
