The daily morning journal and courier., 1901-09-02
WHAT WE OWE TO JULES VERNE.
He Has Lived to See the Realization

There is no eXaggeration in saying
 that some of the most extraordinary
 prophecies of Jules Verne regarding
 travel and scientific achievements have
 already been realized or are on the eve
 of realization. Indeed, at times, the re-
 allty seems to have surpassed his most
 fantastic flights
 It is enough almost to make one sus- pect that he has found in the depths of
 the mysterious grottoes where Captain l Memo used to hide his treasures, the magic amulet which gives the key to
 the secrets of the future.
 Has not Captain Hatteras had hun
 dreds of emulators? None of them, of
 course, has as yet reached the supreme
 object of his desires-the intangible
 Pole, but following his footsteps in the ! line of the direction of the magnetic
 needle, have they not all more or less
 approached it? Does not the story of
 the voyage of the Belgica through the
 ice of the Antarctic Circle resemble a
 page torn out of the Sphinx des 1 Glaces?" Did not Frithjof Nansen,
 in the course of his northern odyssey,
 have to make voyage, just like that of the hero of the Pays des Four
 rures" on board a floating iceberg?
 And has not the most unpretentlous
 hospital or the humblest laboratory,
 thanks to Paul Bert, the means at its
 disposal to invest with reality the par ! adoxical chimera of Doctor OK, not to /, mention the oxygen that is sold in si
 phons and tubes, while we are waiting 1 for the liquefaction of the permanent gases to give us the sea air or the mountain air at home within the reach 1 of everybody?
 | Shall we speak of the "Vingt Mile
 Lieues sous les Mers?" Why, every | body knows that, If the idea is not yet public property, the Ministry of the 1 Navy. at least, has realized 1t. That ministry now runs about under water 1 In the forms and appearances of I know not how many submarine torpe-
 do boats always ready to burst the paunch of the warships that come within their reach. It is some time ago, by the way since the writer of these lines earned the right to affirm from personal experience (the oldest readers of the Figaro may perhaps re- | member it) that one can. with impu- nity. breath, live, write dispatches, and even drink champagne, thirty me-
 tres under the seal
 And even before the late Gustave Rousseau, M. Moissln M. Majorana, and perhaps others, had learned to make reality, like the chemist of the "Etoile du Sud-" of the synthesls of the diamond. rubles and sapphires, made artificially, were, under the hand of my friend. Maiche, common objects In the market.
 The modern cannon. with a range of from fifteen to twenty kilometres; the melenite shells, the aerial torpedoes, &c.--are, I imagine, the equivalents of the fanciful cannonades of the "Cinq Cents Millions de Ia Begun" The "City of Steel" be 1t said in passing, resembles, so strikingly as to be almost confounded with it. the industrial es- tablishment governed by Andrew Car negie, Pierpont Morgan & Co., Even the legendary asphyxiating bomb. ca- pablo of dealing death without pain, and at long range, is scarcely different from the nitrate of amyl projectiles proposed, with neither laughter nor tears, by the electrician, Edward Wes ton.
 We have also "Cind Semaines en Ballon" Everybody knows that mar vellous tale, the best, perhaps, of the ninety-nine which, up to date, have come from the fruitful pen of Jules Verne. Two epic Englishmen, accom- panied by Joe, a servant of the same stamp attempted to go across Africa in a. balloon. To be sure they had
 of cNa balloons. but they put their faith in their star and in the atmospheric cur rents. Convinced that they had only to seek in the vertical plane the one among the many superposed and con- tradictory aerial currents which would lead them in the right direction, they constructed an aerostat. and off they went Starting from Zanzibar, they scared after many dramatic twists and turns above the solid mass of Kilmand- faro, over the country of the Nyam- Nyams above Lake Tchad and the l Kong Mountains, and at last reached some point in French Senegambia.
 The whole story bears a, singular re- | semblance to piece of literary insan- | ity, and the few pontiffs who deigned | to cast their eyes over the book has | tened to conclude, with a disdainful | grimace. that such things happen only in romances. Well, I beg thousand | pardons of the pontiffs but besides M Henry de la aulx who is getting ready to jump over the Mediterranean. l know three good Frenchmen, three distinguished officers, NM. Hourst, Leo Dex and Dibos, who are ready to attempt the aerial trip across the Dark Continent on an absolutely similar plan. with the exception of few mi nor details. It even seems to me that the Municipal Council of Paris has subsidized the enterprise. At any rate, if it has refused to do so, it has done wrong.
 This is not one of Jules Verne's works, even the "Voyage an Centre de a Terre"-the most extraordinary of hem all--which has not been taken up md seriously discussed. We were even ,n the point of seeing that one req ized in the form of well kilometre md a half deep, at the late Exposition, lnder the auspices of an emulator ot Jules Verne, M. Andre Laurie, alias oaschal Grousset. The latter, more ,ver, had only appropriated and re- luced the grand conception of an Ar ,entine doctor, M. J. J. Martinez, who lrsamed of nothing less than piercing he world through and through. Positively, Jules Verne, with his