The Washburn times. [volume] (Washburn, Wis.) 1896-1976, 1907-03-14
THE NEW AERIAL
- A G. ID -

The coming of the airship, believed by
many conservative scientists to be at hand, has
aroused no little discussion as to the effect
human affairs that will result from the intro
ducton of new and revolutionary method of
human transit. The first thought of most of
those who take look ahead is that the airship
will entirely transform modern warfare. They
have visions like that of Tennyson, who
Heard the heavens ill with shouting, AID there
rained CHASTITY dew
From the nations airy naves, graphing in the
central blue.
This is picture to fire the imagination,
but the real war experts do not expect to see
airshps battling in the air, any more than sub
marines fight each other in ocean deeps. Rath
er do they expect the airship to become an
auxiliary power of dreadful effectiveness drop
ping it's fearsom bombs ships and fortifca-
tions and even asphyxiating army corps deplOy
ing on the field of action by envelopng them in
noxious gases This was why the first peace
conference at The Hague agreed to interdict
such style of warfare for five years. That per-
od has now elapsed and unless the second con-
ference, to meet at the Dutch capitol next June
takes similar action, there will be nothing to
prevent the introduction of such measures in
the next war;
IF it be true that an accurately dirigible air.
ship would have the power of reducing great
navies to mere scrap iron, what becomes OF the
sovereignty of the SEAS and what is sea power
worth to any nation? What protection is there
for the British empire and it's eight little isle, -
if a French or German airship can pOse over
Portsmouth and, having found the range with
4l,ov oo1o CHI
ing MATCH? The expenditure required for
such cataclysmal act would be quite insignif-
cant.
Considerations like these lead William 7.
Stead, the English atruist to conclude that
the coming of the airship means the end of
human warfare. The discovery of "Vrl' in
Lyton's The Coming Race furnishes paral-
lei to the condition the human race will face
when the aeroplane become mans reliable SER
want. In reaching his conclusion that war
must end when manAight comes, Mr. Stead
brings a remarkable argument to his aid He
declares that tariff walls will be as impossible in
the new aerial age as Notifications and navies.
The airship will fly over and beyond Any tariff
wall that can possibly be erected. It will SNUG
gle all kinds of lightweight goods which
heavy tariffs are now imposed. Thus there will
instantly disappear sucha reliable source of
revenue for militant governments that they
will be unable to keep up war expenditures!
There is not treasury in Europe, he aserts,
that will not be brought to the door of bank
ruptcy at the very time when, if war is to
tinue the need for an enormous expenditure
the aeroplane fleet will be necessary.
Unfortunately, however, war is a human
evil that is not so easily to be banished Pre-
vious inventions and discoveries of lethal i'm
pOrtance have been hailed as harbingers of last
ing and universal peace. And still the nations
90 to war They will undoubtedly continue to
do so after the airshp comes. If revenues are
not collectible by tariff processes, other meth
DDS will be found. Under present social and
political conditions, it does not seem 1ssible
altogether to prevent AS our par laments
of man grow in power and authority we shall
make progress that way, but not even SO re-
vOlutonary an invention as the airship can pre-
vent the nations from setting their quarrels in
substantially the same way primeval tribes did.
Yet it is far pleasanter picture, that other
one of the Tennysonan seer who
Saw the heavens fill with commerce, argosies of
magic sails,
Pilots of the purple twilight, dropping down with